Just me being silly

[aerofox]

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I know, I should be doing more productive things, but the opportunity presented itself and I went with it!

I'm sure those of you across the pond on either side are probably looking bewildered right now :P
Yes, here in the States, many older houses still use fuses like this one in the mains entrance electrical box.

Comments

[discopanda]

I've actually been thinking of doing something similar, except using those little 120V neons that look sort of like orange LEDs.

[aerofox]

Hehe, I thought about doing that but finding a 120 volt incandescent that fit was more of a challenge ;)

[discopanda]

Now if only you could fit the guts from one of those color-changing LED bulbs into it... (Maybe if you used only one R/G/B combo LED instead of multiple sets of separate red, green, and blue LEDs, and wired the components together directly without the circuit board taking up space...)

[aerofox]

Hah! Love that icon ^_^

[pippinbear]

Hmm! So you have fuses over there which have the same socket as light bulbs? Weird :)

There are older houses here which have rewirable fuses, meaning that you buy fuse wire and use that to replace the wire in the fuse-holder if it blows. Newer ones generally have MCBs (miniature circuit breakers) instead. We don't have types of fuses which fit into light bulb fittings, though!

[megadog]

Fascinating... "Light-up" fuses are something I've come across in cars before. There's a small 12-volt filament bulb wired across the fuse which comes on whrn the fuse blows.

A lot of houses have cartridge-fuse-based panels too.

My house has a 4x15-amp rewireable-fuse style panel, a 4x15-amp cartridge-fuse-type panel [both these serve the power outlets] and a more modern MCB-panel [one 6-amp breaker for lighting, a 16-amp one for the central heating pump/igniter, a second 16-Amp one for the outdoor socket, a 32-amp one for the cooker and a 32-amp one for the horrid 'ring main' power outlets].

Some day I really should get round to replacing the two 15-amp panels with a modern DIN-rail-based system using Residual Current Devices [RCDs].

[pippinbear]

That "light-up fuse" idea makes a lot of sense, actually. Never seen it myself.

Our house, and the ones we let out, all have modern RCD+MCB consumer units, but one of my sisters used to live in a tiny little 1-bedroom open plan house which had an older fuse-box with rewirable fuses. They had to replace one once - before that I'd never heard of them!

[megadog]

12V Illuminated Blade Fuse - brilliant for those of us who measure downtime by the dollar.

My house is 160 years old and the electrics kinda reflect this. OK there's no rubber-covered cable... but the rest of it is 'interesting'.

I really hate the traditional UK "ring-main" stuff and any new circuits I install are always a twin 13-amp socket outlet wired back to a separate fuse/MCB in the wiring-closet. It's much easier to identify failures and 'nuisance' trips this way.

[akirashima]

but would it still work like a fuse?
cause that would be uber keen to know the fuse blew cause the light is out!

that was neat

[aerofox]

Not really, it ends up limiting the current to a few milliamps and nothing would work on the circuit its screwed into. Though, it would glow nicely when the wall switch is flipped on ^_^

It would be a cool idea to put a bulb in with the fuse so it would act in the opposite way. If the fuse is good, the internal bulb would be off. If the fuse blows, then it lights up!

[akirashima]

either way would be good since it would just be nice to be able to tell at a glance, especially at my old place where everything worked on a single 30 amp fuse.

[firebreathxiii]

Not just houses, but appliances too! We have a rather recent stove and it has 3 of those. :)

[wyoon]

I like it!