Thread: 15amp welders on 10amp circuits

Originally Posted by SpiritLevel

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I have never read the electrical wiring standards. Why should I? But please let me give you an example of bad standards being kept because there is no political will or enough commercial benefit in changing: motorcycle helmets.
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Well I have browsed ( not read and memorised)that code
I have browsed through that particular standard and read and understood 50 to a 100 hundred others as part of my training for a Workplace Health and Safety Officer and some years back as a Welding Supervisor & Welding Inspector.That knowledge and experience of how standards and codes of practice operate, are the basis for my comment.

If you have never read the the wiring standards your self, how is it possible then,that you are in a position to make an informed comment based upon on what is in the code and yet have no knowledge why certain provisions are present in it.

In this particular case, the standard is used as a base for Australian State Government legislations concerning electrical wiring.

Standards are created by the industry parties invited by the Australian Standards Association to confer and initially create a draft code paper on the particular topic in question.This paper is open to all who wish to make comment.(When the helmet standards come up for renewal that is your avenue should you wish to take the time and effort to be involved.)

The legislative side of government has no input at this point other than perhaps the pertinent monitoring body,ie work health and & safety departments.

In many of our standards Australia are the world leaders in practice of many fields.Therefore it is reasonable to assume that our standards are advanced.I know this to be so when dealing with a lot of welding especially welding testing.

I claim no knowledge of of motor cycle helmet design or manufacture but would hesitate to believe that the standards association collaborated with the government by including a spurious test rule to exclude a certain helmet.

What I do know that this a public forum widely read and anyone who was deemed to be involved in advising and assisting someone else to break a LAW may well find themselves in a court somewhere when it all when pear shaped when an accident or fatality occurred.

People may well consider themselves competent in certain areas and do things contrary to legeslation in their home.If that goes wrong it is they who take the responsibility.

To offer advice which one is not not legally competent to offer on a forum such as ours is not not wise and if you scroll back to the first page of this thread, there is a disclaimer specifically written about advice unauthorised electrical work.
Licensed electrical personnel are licensed for this very reason is that they have the knowledge,experience and training and it they who must answer when it goes terribly wrong.

Those are my last words about this subject.

Grahame

Grahame,

thank you for your last words.

I have offered no advice to anyone to rewire nor am I doing any wiring myself. My garage had 15amp plugs installed before I moved here. If public discussion of the law or the appropriateness of regulations is regarded as advice to break that law then most people are guilty of that already. Have you never questioned the need for a regulation or a law?

I have not claimed a technical critique of the electrical standard - I asked a simple question about the regulatory response to what many people on this forum has said was a dangerous practice, and which has been restricted to properly qualified persons. To simplify my point - if there is an appreciable risk and hence dangerous, merely having a bigger earth tab on the plug seems a bit of weak and inadequate response. It seems inconsistent.

The second point I made was that regulations and standards can often be made for the benefit of the people making or contributing to the regulations, rather than purely on risk management, and the decisions on risk are inherently political (even without an elected politician involved).

It is undeniable that the standard we have been discussing (which I understand from others' post is unique in the world) has financially benefited the electrical trades, by removing competition from DIYers. These electrical trades would have been - quite properly involved - in the drafting and setting of the standards.

How many DIYers do you think would have taken up the opportunity to write a submission, and how much notice would have been taken of them, as opposed to the trades bodies?

Cheers, and I appreciate the knowledge you bring to your posts.

PS - the helmet was merely an example, and that world unique part of the standard is in place not because we have unique riding conditions but because Australian Standards wanted a standard for Australia rather than adopting that of other standard bodies.

Originally Posted by SpiritLevel

As a general note, and speaking as a professional lobbyist and ex-public servant guilty of many such things, I would caution people against taking the standards and regulations as gospel on safety, as opposed to legality.

Many, many standards and regulations are decided for:
a) the convenience for and the clarity of administration,
b) the cashflow of the regulated industry,
c) imposing a barrier to competition and new entrants into the new industry,
d) avoidance of liablility or parliamentary scrutiny,
e) getting a story off the front page of the Herald Sun or Daily Telegraph
f) personal beliefs of the regs compiler
g) it was after lunch and everyone was sleepy and/or bored.
h) the last flight back to XXXX was soon and the techy guy who knew about this one had to leave to catch it,
i) "lets take this one as read"
j) it was the last sticking point and no-one wanted to come back next month
k) The technical expert was replaced by their administrative manager who was staying over for the weekend (or the tech expert was sick but there were too many senior staff involved to cancel)

Very true.

If you've been out of the public service for a while, you can now add "new manager was looking at getting a 'quick win on the board' so they'd have something to boast about in their performance agreement to make sure they got their next pay increment or so they could be considered for HDA in their bosses job" to the above list.

NZ (who share the exact same electrical standards as us) allowed DIY electrical back in the early to mid 90's. Their electrical accident rate is - after 15+ years of DIYing, lower than ours.

But that's not all that hard, as Australia has the highest rate and it is the only country where you can't do your own.

So it's not about safety (if it was, how hard would it be to make it a condition of sale of wire/switches that a valid electricians licence was produced - similar to proof of age for alcohol or MA video games/movies).

So back to the original question. Have we decided whether it is safe to run a 15amp welder on a 10amp circuit. ... Are there any risks?

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

What I do know that this a public forum widely read and anyone who was deemed to be involved in advising and assisting someone else to break a LAW may well find themselves in a court somewhere when it all when pear shaped when an accident or fatality occurred.

The server that woodwork forums uses is based in the US, so what is in the forum is applicable to US laws not AU laws...

AFAIK a homeowner in the US can do a course that allows them to wire their house but it has to be inspected by a qualified person and it then gets signed off...

Originally Posted by Geoff Dean

So back to the original question. Have we decided whether it is safe to run a 15amp welder on a 10amp circuit. ... Are there any risks?

Well the correct question is "Is it safe to pull more then 10 amps out of a 10 amp plug"

If you are pulling 9 amps out of a ten amp plug it is OK, if you are pulling 11 amps out of a 10 amp plug then it is not OK... How do you know how many amps you are pulling out of the plug? I will leave that up to each individual to work out themselves...

As far as I'm concerned, it would be better to replace the 10 amp socket with a 15 amp socket on a (minimum) 16 amp circuit, rather than making some sort of 10-to-15-amp extension cord kludge, filing the earth pin or doing a plug swap on the welder cord.

Replacing the socket maintains circuit protection by an appropriately rated breaker (for 2.5mm T&E, worst case is that a power circuit will be rated at 16 amps, best case is 30+ amps) and doesn't leave room for the welder (if fitted with a modified/swapped plug) to be connected by a long run of 10 or 7.5 amp extension cord.

Only drawback is that if the circuit has a number of other things on it, you could be popping the breaker a lot. If it's a circuit that is (say) servicing the garage only, then this is unlikely to be a major problem.

Note that the load presented to the circuit by a 15 amp welder is going to be exactly the same as the load presented by your 2,000 watt kettle and your 1,500 watt toaster oven connected to the same 10 amp rated double power point in the kitchen.

Originally Posted by .RC.

Well the correct question is "Is it safe to pull more then 10 amps out of a 10 amp plug"

Spot on. The answer would logically seem to be no. Once you are over the rated capacity of a device (the plug, GPO or circuit), you are in a grey area where at the very least you are taking a risk. Now if you're the only one taking the risk, then that's one thing, but if you thrust that risk onto someone else who is unknowing of the risk, then that's a whole n'other kettle of fish. Filing earth pins, changing plugs and swapping 10amp GPOs with 15amp all fall into that category.

Originally Posted by Geoff Dean

So back to the original question. Have we decided whether it is safe to run a 15amp welder on a 10amp circuit. ... Are there any risks?

I'll answer that with a few points.

1. The forum, and various tradies, and the wiring rules tell us that doing so is in contravention of the law. You can be in no doubt about that.

2. Reasoning has told us that a typical 10A circuit is protected by a 16A breaker, and therefore will protect the internal wiring from excessive current that might cause the internal wiring to fail in a catastrophic manner.

3. Evidence has shown that a commonly-used (but not necessarily all) 10A sockets have the same current-carrying capacity as a 15A socket from the same provider.

4. Experience shows that one does not often run a welder at its maximum setting, and at those higher settings is where the risk lies. At that point, the most likely risk you'll face is nuisance tripping of the breaker on the circuit if there are other significant loads on the same circuit. At worst, the plug and socket could fail to cope with the above-10A current, heat up, melt and fail and could start a fire at that point.

So with the infromation presented, the responsibility lies soley with you.

The server that woodwork forums uses is based in the US, so what is in the forum is applicable to US laws not AU laws...

Whilst it is a grey area, there has been at least one defamation case brought in Australian courts by an Australian citizen against an American web site: Dow Jones & Co. Inc. v Gutnick. I don't think that the site being hosted on a web server in the US allows us to circumvent Australian law. You will find reference to this in one of the site's sticky posts about forum liability.

It is undeniable that the standard we have been discussing (which I understand from others' post is unique in the world) has financially benefited the electrical trades, by removing competition from DIYers. These electrical trades would have been - quite properly involved - in the drafting and setting of the standards.

I think you are confusing the wiring standard with the various acts of legislation that prevent unqualified people from doing their own wiring. The wiring standard does not protect the electrical trades. It simply describes how to do the job according to standards.

It's also a logical fallacy to suggest that because you have one example of a poor standard, that all of them must be so. There's a bit of a tendency for people to make all sorts of assumptions based on very little fact. By your own admission you haven't read the standard, so in my opinion there is absolutely no basis for your assertion.

As far as I'm concerned, it would be better to replace the 10 amp socket with a 15 amp socket on a (minimum) 16 amp circuit, rather than making some sort of 10-to-15-amp extension cord kludge, filing the earth pin or doing a plug swap on the welder cord.

As far as I'm concerned, it would be better to hire an electrician than to take advice from an armchair expert who has just recently gotten off his "pimply behind" and actually looked at the wiring standard.

Originally Posted by silentC

Whilst it is a grey area, there has been at least one defamation case brought in Australian courts by an Australian citizen against an American web site: Dow Jones & Co. Inc. v Gutnick. I don't think that the site being hosted on a web server in the US allows us to circumvent Australian law. You will find reference to this in one of the site's sticky posts about forum liability.

Take note, you can be successfully pursued through the courts for what you say here. Do not be confused by internet discussions about what others *think* your responsibilities are, read the sticky post as suggested by SilentC and save yourself an embarrassing and expensive education in a court room.

Groggy
Forum Moderator

Originally Posted by Groggy

Take note, you can be successfully pursued through the courts for what you say here.

Of course you can, but it is all how well the administrators want to play... As the server is US based the website owner can tell AU authorities to get stuffed if they demand info about a person because that person dared to tell someone how to do something legal under US law..

If I posted instructions on how a woman can drive a car is the government of Saudi Arabia (which bans any female from driving) going to demand you give them my IP address which they can use to locate what internet account this was written from...

Slander and defamation are different though..

But then an IP does not identify an individual only an internet account, and IP's can be impossible to track if run through a proxy server or the likes of TOR or if from a public terminal.

Plus the email address you use to register can be an anonymous yahoo one..

In the case I quoted, seven judges of the high court found that a citizen of Australia can bring legal action in an Australian court against a company operating in the US for material which was published on a web server in the US.

This means that the focus was shifted from where the material was published (the US) to where the defamation occurred (Australia). The laws of Australia apply to the case, not those of the US.

As it happens they settled out of court. But the decision means that if a person can show that a case in common law can be made against a another person who has published information on a web site hosted in another country, they can have recourse through the courts.

I don't know whether it would extend to the tort of negligence because this one was specifically to do with where a defamation action can be brought. In any case, I don't think I'd want to risk it myself on principle. Would love to see a test case though. Putting your hand up?

As for the web site owner telling authorities to get stuffed, I think it has been made quite clear in the sticky post that if someone wants to go after you because of something you've posted, the site owners will have no hesitation in handing over your details:

Please be assured, if it comes to the crunch and someone wants to sue me or any of the administrators or moderators, for something a non thinking member has posted, I will hand over every bit of identifying information I have to the authorities without blinking an eye.

silentC - you can lead a horse to water.............etc.