Who am I ranting about? My parents. Why? Is it because I'm a teenager rebelling? Naw, too old for that. Is it because I'm too old and they're "tying me down?" nope, too dependent for that. Is it because they asked me to do something and I don't feel like doing it? Nope. So what is it? Because of their blatant act of stupidity. Put them down for a Darwin, because if they don't wise up soon, they're gonna die in a terrific fire of their own creation.
What makes me say this? Let me setup the scenario for you: Our house has been having renovations done to it for some time now. We've had plans for this for ever, and finally are getting to realize our dream of having a garage. However, the location it is being installed in is right in the path of the power line leading from the transformer to our house. So, to adjust for this the people putting in the garage placed a simple wooden riser to hold the power line up while they worked. Eventually, an electrician was going to come out and cut the power line, run it through an underground conduit beneath the garage and then reattach it to the house. Generally a list a good ideas. However, he is not due here until tomorrow. Ironically, there was a nasty freak storm that blew up and pounded my house. In the process, the wooden riser fell over and yanked on the power lines. In the process, it sheared one of the lines clear (I think. It may have just ripped part of one of the other two wires and that third one was never connected in the first place.) leaving us with only half of the normal current carrying wires that normally run to the house. The symptoms are as follows: Any time the furnace comes on, it causes the whole house to dim and STAY THAT WAY (This is the hint...), many other devices, when activated or deactivated cause major power spikes/drops in the house. The measured circuit voltage over operation of normal devices (Lights, computers, and the furnace) has been wandering between 120 V and 109 V.
Now... For anyone who knows anything about ohms law (Which, alledgadly my father is one of said people) you can quickly show than that for the voltage on the line to drop (when it wasn't before), a resistor of significant value (Using the word significant in the sense of 'significant compared to another resistor in the same circuit') has to have been added. Now, since devices driven by motors act like constant power devices (You know... Watts kind of power,) In order for the voltage to decrease and the power to remain constant, the current must increase. We already know that a higher-than-normal resistance (caused by a thinner wire) exists in the circuit (As shown by the voltage drop), so when we get the power radiated by this resistor, we apply I^2*R and, since both I and R have increased, Power absorbed must have increased as well.
But what does "Power Absorbed" have anything to do with my parents unintentional act of suicide? All that power, since it's being fed into a resistor, and not otherwise being asked to do any other specific kind of work, is being dissipated in the universe's default energy type: Heat. Now this means that somewhere along the wire that comes into our house, there is a hot spot, begging to ignite anything it can get it's hands on. This is the part where the house (Or possibly the new, rather expensive garage) is turned into carbon ash and the scorched corpses of a few human beings. Now, to reduce the risk of danger, several steps where taken: unplugging the microwave and fridge, turning off any unnecessary lights, not using the desktop computer because the laptop is more power efficient, that kind of thing. With discipline, we had managed to get the unexpected voltage drop on the circuit down to a mere 11 volts when the fan on the furnace was just turning on (and consuming the most power.) This is still too much, but the idea is that this high drop is rare, and only found for a short period of about 3 seconds every 30 minutes. Even if the current draw was 100 amps, the total number of joules of energy dissipated into the wire would be easily absorbed by the metal, and radiated off in the cold, stormy air.
But wait? It sounds like you did everything you could, how are your parents trying to commit suicide?
Ah... Now we get to the part I'm mad about.
As we've already covered, motors are constant POWER devices, and will draw all the power it takes to accomplish the job. (There are a whole bunch of things going on here that makes this statement only kinda true, but it get's us close enough.) It can also be said that the power drawn by motors in household appliances like driers and air conditioners, is actually very large (on the 1KW/H level.) Now, let's mix in one more small point, and that's that heating coils cost a little bit more power than they radiate, so if a coil was designed to raise the temperature of 1/4 cubic meter worth of water 10 degrees in 5 minutes,the amount of energy needed is 1/4*10,000*10 or 25,000 Joules. Now... Consider the standing problem. Because of the storm, we need the furnace, and we know we're only safe because of the large periods of down time. Now, let's do what my parents did... Let's turn on the FRIGGIN DISHWASHER!!!
Couldn't it have waited till morning? Maybe the dishes could have been done by hand? No... My parents brought the voltage in the house (Including the furnace, dishwasher, my laptop (60 W), and the lights in the room I was in) down into the low 90's. This means that 30V of energy at dozens of amps, where somewhere in on or around my house, being radiated off as heat. And unlike the furnace, the dishwasher draws it's current for a CONTINUOUS 90 MINUTES!!! That's literally hundreds of thousands of joules of energy being dumped into a wire and some siding somewhere... It's insane...
Didn't they think of this?!
Well, I have to be up early to meet with the electrician... So I'm going to bed... If I'm lucky, I might get 6 whole hours of sleep. :(
Grumble grumble
Mood: Angry