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| Authored by: Tufty on Wednesday, May 16 2012 @ 10:41 PM EDT |
The article that image links with has a picture of the fuse-holder above the
picture of the wire that would make it clearer. If the circuit was overloaded
and the fuse-wire kept blowing there was a tendency to replace the wire with the
next thicker size or a nice thick bit of copper wire. Made for a few electrical
fires! Mind you, an American equivalent would be wrapping foil around a
cartridge fuse.
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Linux powered squirrel.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: greed on Thursday, May 17 2012 @ 12:04 AM EDT |
Here in Canada, threaded fuse sockets only look like light sockets. You can't
fit a lightbulb into them.
The bottom of screw-in fuses has a little cylinder shape protrusion. The socket
has a matching cylindrical socket, with the contact at the bottom.
The higher the amperage the fuse, the larger the cylinder. So you can't fit a
20A fuse in a 15A socket, or a 30A fuse in a 20A socket, and so on.
Obviously, kit from 100 years ago won't have these features. But if you still
have a panel like that, your insurance company has already introduced you to the
phrase, "Non-renew". And you don't have a mortgage, either. (Buried
oil tanks on your property will give you the same issues.)
Now, if replacing a fuse with a lump of wire causes something else to go live,
you've got serious problems. Especially if it isn't something that's supposed
to be electric at all. (Failed insulation in the water heater? Water pump?
Failed neutral in water pump? A system that old probably also doesn't have
safety ground or GFCIs (or ELCBs for people who know what a "ring
main" is).)
Replacing a fuse when you don't know why it blew is like rebooting a UNIX
server: whatever caused the problem is still broken. SunOS 4 on a SparcSTATION
1 notwithstanding....
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| Authored by: nuthead on Thursday, May 17 2012 @ 10:28 AM EDT |
| The way I've often heard about is that the "old" screw-in fuses (okay, old is
relative -- I've seen them in apartments as recently as the 1990s) could be
"replaced" with a penny.
I've also seen many fires caused by
people doing just that. It's not a good idea. ;) [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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