Anyone hear of a 120V clothes dryer? (2023 Update)

In America those are those "business-killing" regulations you hear about:

You don't seem to understand what you think you understand. If the condenser evaporator temperature differential is reduced, the heat pump can maintain the cold side temperature with less effort. This is why heat pumps don't work well when it is very cold out. Moving the heat up a greater differential requires more work so that at some point the heat pump has to work 110% of the time.

Bottom line is you are wrong about the net effect not raising the temperature in the room when a dehumidifier is running. You seem to be trying to distract from that.

You see people trying to sell small apartments and condos sometimes saying how much "less" housework you'll have to do, BS on that all your living space and gear just gets worn faster. Sort of like living on a space station, they think the residents of the ISS don't have to spend no time cleaning?!

Your water management has failed.

-or-

You inadvertently built your house on top of an intermittent spring.

-or-

Terrain around your house slopes into house.

There are such things as bone dry basements in high humidity and wet environments. They achieve this with sound water management.

Have you ever seen water run out of your drain invert when it rains?

You brought up Germany using oil and gas, and I mentioned that they have a lot of solar today. But that solar is not very usable for heating.

Those 110-130kWh are the "usual for here" 180cm high 60x60cm stacked freezer and fridge (2 doors) combo's. I understand that in the USA they usually are bigger, but that does not directly affect the energy consumption, that is mainly determined by the number of door openings and probably even more by strange accessories like an external ice cube dispenser.

A chest freezer of the efficient category uses about 200kWh/year.

I also consider it unbelievable that their equipment is an order of magnitude less efficient than ours... Maybe some of the specs are for 25 year old fridges that "still run well so why replace them"?

One or more of these things may or may not be true, but it's totally irrelevent and I see no reason to appease your control freak habits. It's my house, not yours, and I know what's going on, and you'll have to live with "and you don't".

3 phase is something that is above the head of many electricians that usually wire only lights and sockets.

I recently saw people puzzeled with connecting a 3-phase motor at work, it had only 4 connections: 3 phases and PE. They could not understand why it had no neutral, and tried all kinds of different wirings, blowing the GFI and I think even fuses.

Of course the motor simply was triangle wired and had no neutral.

Those electricians should have been familiar with 3 phase as they were a big construction company that does industrial electrical work. We had a multimillion dollar building built and there was another heater for the process in that building. Something around 150 amps at 480 volts 3 phase. It did not work. When I was called, I checked the resistance of the elements and they were not ballanced at all. Had their head electrician to check his wiring. He tried to correct it several times and one time he had even left one leg open. As the controller was on the 1 st floor and the heater was on the 4 th floor I did not go with him untuil I got tired of him messing up . I went with him and he pulled out some blue prints. I told him to just wad those things up and throw them off the building as either they were wrong or he could not read them. I just wired it up as I thought it should be and it worked fine after that. I must have lucked out on that one as that was the first time I had ever seen that particualar piece of equipment.

and wired star it wouldn't need neutral either

Good solution. I tried that with my clothes washer once, and it overflowed my measuring tub... Alternately, one could examine the utility water meter reading before and after a load (but washers nowadays are load-sensing variable fill widgets, so your data won't be terribly useful).

The frequency with which doors are opened determines overall efficiency.

I just returned from a small shopping trip. Carried the gallon jug of milk into the house in one hand, mail from POBox in the other. Open frig, place milk inside.

Back out to the car. Two bags of prewashed salad greens and a package of smoked salmon -- into the frig with those, too. Put the ice cream directly into the deep freeze -- we won't be needing it for several days.

Three packs of three chicken breasts and a pack of 2x2 pork tenderloins -- into the refrigerator.

Extract one grinder roll from 12pack (for meal later this evening) and place remaining in deep freeze. Along with hamburger buns (no plans for those in the near future).

Dry goods off to the pantry.

Ah, now I can make a salad as I've not yet had dinner. Out comes one of the new bags of salad greens. Dump

12 oz into a large bowl. Reseal bag and return to frig. Dice a few slices of onion to add to salad mix. Store remainder of onion in frig.

Dress and toss salad. Retrieve grated cheese from frig. Sprinkle atop salad. Return balance to frig.

Later, retrieve ONE of the packages of chicken breasts from frig. Clean each breast, cut into smaller pieces, individually wrap. Return to frig TEMPORARILY as you retrieve next pack of three breasts. Repeat until all

9 breasts have been cleaned, cut and wrapped. Transfer to deep freeze.

Cut 2x2 pack of pork tenderloins in half (two tenderloins in each "half package"). Clean each. Cut in half. Wrap and return to frig TEMPORARILY as you retrieve other half of package. When all 4 tenderloins have been cleaned, cut and wrapped, transfer to deep freeze.

Later, SWMBO will perform a similar act on the smoked salmon, placing the wrapped pieces back in the frig. I'll "discover" them, later -- or be prompted to attend to them -- and transfer them to the deep freeze.

A similar process will play out in 3 days -- though it will likely involve bulk purchases of different items and their preparation for longer term storage.

And, of course, this is in addition to the normal access patterns for the frig. Each time the door opens, all that cold air falls out onto the floor. I suspect a "chest style" refrigerator (like our deep freeze) would be considerably more efficient. But, take up a lot more floor space!

Lots of doors opening and closing -- just to unload groceries!

Site it in a garage that sees ambients of 140F and tell me what it's consumption is. Or, air condition the garage and shift the cost of operating it into a different portion of your budget! :>

Would appear that removing the heat from the surrounding would cool the surrounding. If the house is being cooled that is an advantage. If heated the surrounding would have to be heated.

And, people make mistakes.

I babysat a friend's house some years ago. I was emphatically told not to use a particular outlet in the kitchen: "It blew up my microwave!"

[No, not possible! You must be mistaken...]

I had a need to use it and, not wanting to be chagrined if the admonition had proven wrong, I took out a DMM and checked the three connections.

Sure as shit, the outlet was wired with two opposing legs of the 240V service -- and "earth". WTF??

Thinking about it for a minute, it was obvious: the electrician who had wired it had used 12/4 for the counter circuits. Red-white-green for one duplex receptacle, black-white-green for the next (to support the two 20A circuits required by Code for countertops).

Except he's done this one receptacle red-black-green. Ooops!

A previous homeowner (my house) had obviously thought he understood "wiring". Replaced a switch that controls the garage interior light. A switch is a switch, right?

Hmmm... four wires, here: red, black, white and bare. OK, three terminals on this switch -- a gold one, a silver one and a green one. Plus three wires exiting the box (to the light fixture). Just connect them up until the lighting circuit APPEARED to work.

Sometimes.

I noticed that switch had no effect on ANYTHING! "Gee, I wonder where this goes?"

Plastic Jboxes so the switch frame has no guaranteed connection to earth (as it would in a grounded METAL box). Depending on the position of switch 1 ("three way"), the frame of switch two would be tied to line voltage. "Why do I keep getting shocks when I

*touch* this switch??"

Folks either are intimidated by wiring. Or, over confident about it. The latter ones are the ones to be wary of!

But these days refrigerators don't use much power. You might want a receptacle behind the refrigerator with a ceiling light.

In the US it is the NEC. NEMA likely doesn't care. But UL is also a consideration. The general rule, as you said, is if a load is considered "continuous" (over 3 hours) the circuit is derated to 80%. But if there are 2 or more receptacles (duples = 2) the load can only be 80% of the rating for the receptacle even if not continuous (IMHO a stupid rule, and unenforceable). UL does not agree and may, for instance, put a 15A plug on something that uses over 12A (but not "continuous"). An even dumber NEC rule allows a 20A receptacle on a 15A circuit if there is only one receptacle on the circuit.

Under the US NEC, for many years kitchen counter, laundry and bathroom circuits are 20A. A 15 or 20A receptacle can be placed on a 20A circuit. A 15A duplex receptacle is rated 20A total between both of them, and 20A wire-through.

A standard US electric dryer outlet is 30A. Ranges often 50A.

Yes that is true, but not from power from the wall socket.

Yes it is really important to open the door as little as possible, but those quoted figures assume a fixed number of openings that is probably on the low side of practical, but not zero.

The issue (here) mainly is that each time you open the door you let in a load of moist air. When air at room temperature is cooled to fridge temperature the water in it condenses (at least here...) and that takes a lot of energy. The condensed water is visible on the shelves and products when you open the door shortly after. In a dry climate it could be better.

In the freezer part the water not only condenses but also freezes, and this forms an insulating layer that reduces the performance so it has to be thawed away. So opening it as little as possible helps there as well, and a chest freezer is much better in this respect because it reduces the air exchange due to the cold air being heavier.

Over here the problem with putting fridges in a garage more often is that they get too cold. Fridges, and especially the combination freezer/fridges, have a temperature range of operation (different ranges are available for different climates) and it is often quite disastrous to go below the minimum (less than to go above the maximum).