european appliances to be used in USA

[JDBrown]

...
If you give an engineer the parameters required, he or she needs to make it happen - they can design products to last two or twenty years, they can design a vacuum that will work with a smaller motor. No big deal.

Unfortunately, it may not be possible to make a vacuum with a smaller motor that also works properly and will last twenty years. When we reduce the size of the motor to the absolute minimum that will do the job under laboratory conditions, the motor ends up being stressed in real-world conditions. If a 900W motor will just barely do the job of powering a vacuum cleaner, what happens when the bag gets a little full and a few dozen strands of hair get wrapped around the rotating brush? Well, if you're using a 1500W motor it may not be too big of a deal -- you finish vacuuming the house, and then you change the bag and clean off the brush.

But if all you've got is a 900W motor, you might even be able to hear the difference in how hard it's working after you vacuum up that hair. Now, if you don't stop and clean off the brush right away, your motor will be stressed as you finish vacuuming the house. The windings will get hotter than they were designed to get, and it will lead to premature failure. And then we will all complain about how that lousy engineer must have purposely designed this vacuum to have a super short lifespan.

The only doubt I have is whether the limits being mandated are based on engineering or wishful thinking.

Sadly, the rules are written by politicians for political reasons, and they have little or no understanding of what is required to make appliances actually work. So we get rules that are based more and more on wishful thinking, which lead to less sound engineering practices and cutting corners in order to comply with government regulations.

This has happened with cars containing less and less metal as time goes on, in order to lighten them up and comply with fuel efficiency standards. Something similiar will probably happen with appliances. It starts with the government limiting vacuum cleaners to 1600W, and nobody thinks too much of it because it doesn't really affect anything. But then it gets dropped to 900W and all of a sudden they don't clean as well as the older models, but the politicians don't notice because they don't do their own vacuuming (and their staff will be able to get more powerful commercial models anyway).

So while the regular citizens are cursing their new under-powered "efficient" vacuum cleaners, the politicians all pat themselves on the back and congratulate each other for reducing energy consumption. In fact, they're so pleased that they ask themselves, "If this worked out so well with vacuum cleaners, why not apply it to all appliances?"

Now your wife's angry because a 900W hair dryer just doesn't work as well as her old 1800W model. And have you ever used a 900W microwave (we're talking 900W input power, not 900W output)? Plan on microwaving that plate of leftovers for about 15 minutes. But hey, it's all good, 'cause it's more energy efficient.

As you might have guessed by now, I'm not a big fan of energy efficiency standards. I am, however, a big fan of requiring manufacturers to clearly state how much power is consumed by their product, because I like to be able to make decisions about operating costs vs. durability myself, instead of having my Big Brother make them for me.

Oh, and I know this was a while ago, but...

Just to "correct" some of the misinformation here...

It is cheaper to ship the appliances than to buy new ones. We shipped a bunch of stuff air freight for about $2000 which included a washing machine, commercial espresso machine, vacuum (miele), books, dinner set, clothes, etc.
...

Thanks for the correction, Petros. I've never had to ship anything overseas, and I'm genuinely surprised that it was so cheap compared to the price of the appliances. Sometimes I forget not everybody's as big a cheapskate as I am -- I bought most of my appliances for $20-$50 apiece on Craigslist, and it wouldn't make much sense to ship them anywhere but across town in the back of a pickup.

 

[weressl]

Unfortunately, it may not be possible to make a vacuum with a smaller motor that also works properly and will last twenty years. When we reduce the size of the motor to the absolute minimum that will do the job under laboratory conditions, the motor ends up being stressed in real-world conditions. If a 900W motor will just barely do the job of powering a vacuum cleaner, what happens when the bag gets a little full and a few dozen strands of hair get wrapped around the rotating brush? Well, if you're using a 1500W motor it may not be too big of a deal -- you finish vacuuming the house, and then you change the bag and clean off the brush.

But if all you've got is a 900W motor, you might even be able to hear the difference in how hard it's working after you vacuum up that hair. Now, if you don't stop and clean off the brush right away, your motor will be stressed as you finish vacuuming the house. The windings will get hotter than they were designed to get, and it will lead to premature failure. And then we will all complain about how that lousy engineer must have purposely designed this vacuum to have a super short lifespan.

If we arguing about engineered solutions a 900W unit can be protected against overload just as well as a 1500W unit.

 

[JDBrown]

If we arguing about engineered solutions a 900W unit can be protected against overload just as well as a 1500W unit.

That's true. The point I was trying to make was that there are always trade-offs. When energy efficiency is the main goal, quality, user-friendliness and durability may have to be reduced in order to meet that goal.

In the case of reducing vacuum cleaners to 900W, something is going to be sacrificed in order to achieve the reduction in power consumption. We might sacrifice user-friendliness and just make the vacuum half as wide, so there will be less brush-on-carpet contact and therefore less load on the motor. We might decide that nobody's going to buy a 6" wide vacuum and keep the machine size the same, while shortening the brush bristles, thus reducing the load on the motor by reducing the brush's ability to pick up dirt.

Another option could be leaving everything the same and just using a smaller motor. This would cause the vacuum to work fine for short periods, but it might trip the motor's thermal overload if you try to vacuum the whole house at one go. Somewhere along the line, sacrifices will have to be made in order to comply with energy efficiency mandates.

I just really dislike the attitude that says, "We're going to do this. Don't tell me it's impossible -- you're an engineer; you'll figure out some way to make it work." That approach works really well, right up until it doesn't. Take IBM's history, for example (note: this is what I remember learning in college; I wasn't around for any of this).

For years, the norm in the computing industry was for the engineers to do double-duty as salespeople. They would work out a client's needs, figure out what their company could do to help the client meet his goals, and then draw up a contract based on those factors.

IBM didn't follow that typical model -- they had professional salespeople do their selling, and they promised the clients the moon and stars. Then they went back to report on their sale and the conversation went something like this:

Salesperson: "We just signed a contract with ABC corporation for $250,000. We'll need to provide X, Y and Z."

Engineer: "Uh ... we can do X, but Y and Z don't even exist."

Manager: "Well, you'd better get to work inventing them, then, because we've already got a signed contract."

It was stressful as all get out for the engineers, but it got results. Time and time again the engineers came through in the clutch, and IBM was churning out new products left and right. Life was good. Unfortunately, after a while the salespeople and managers started to believe that if they could dream something up, their engineers could build it if they were only pushed hard enough. Of course, this business model wasn't sustainable because eventually they overextended themselves and started promising things that were too far out of reach for the engineers -- the technology just wasn't there yet. And so IBM crashed and burned for a while.

I see a lot of these government mandates as pushing us toward the same sort of crash, and I want no part of it.

 

[spark master]

Hubble makes 250v/15amp duplex receptacles. But you say the NEC doesn't allow it ??

One facility we service, has 250v/15a receptacles all over their plant. Hundreds of them. They move their European equipment all over their shop, and simply plug in where ever they want too. All the equipment works perfect on 208volts. The ground wire is green with a stripe. Not much else is different.

Even the European 3 phase equipment works fine on 208volts.

 

[iwire]

Hubble makes 250v/15amp duplex receptacles. But you say the NEC doesn't allow it ??

Not in a dwelling unit, other places no problem

 

[spark master]

Not in a dwelling unit, other places no problem

Is there a reason behind this ? I mean a real valid reason.

 

[iwire]

Is there a reason behind this ? I mean a real valid reason.

Don't know, lack of need is likely one.

 

[spark master]

Lack of need to the average person, is not a valid reason. Me personally: I have a 240v air compressor, welder, microwave. Think about all the electronics you can run of one circuit of 240volts in a dwelling unit.