We live in the US and have recently had a new dryer installed. The new dryer has an L-shaped ground as opposed to a flat ground for the old dryer. The people who delivered the dryer said that I could change the plug but the circuit had to be 30A, not 50A. I looked on the fuse box and the dryer circuit had a double switch with 30A on each switch. Does this mean that the circuit is 30A or 60A?
Many thanks in advance for any assistance, Peter.
30A. You're fine. None of the dryers I've bought (not many, admittedly) came with cords/plugs. The reason being, as you've found, that not all houses use the same receptacles. It's easier just to buy the appropriate cord for the house.
The plug with the straight ground prong is a 50 amp plug for a kitchen range. A dryer plug is only 30 amps and should have the plug with the L shaped ground prong. Someone wrongly installed a range receptacle on your dryer circuit.
30A is standard for a clothes dryer, I've never seen one that required more. You have a 30A circuit, it has a double pole breaker because in the split phase panels in North America that's how you get 240V. 120V from either side to ground, 240V between the two sides. A 240V circuit gives you twice the power capacity by doubling the voltage, but it is still 30 Amps because the same current flows through each side. In your case, it sounds like you just need to replace the receptacle with one matching the dryer plug.
There are two varieties, 3 wire and 4 wire, one has neutral, one is only two hots and ground. My Maytag Neptune dryer can be configured for either one, when I got it I had to replace the 4 wire cord with a 3 wire and change a jumper wire in junction box on the dryer, I forget the details but it had instructions on the inside cover of the box.
On Jul 18, 3:14=A0pm, James Sweet wrote: snipped
This may at first seem a mere linguistic quibble but receptacles for dryers can more accurately be described as having a separate Equipment Grounding terminal plus two hots and a neutral or as only having two hots and a neutral. Since dryers manufactured for the North American market usually have 120 volt motors and controls there must always be a neutral present in the circuit for them to operate. In older installations it was thought to be acceptable to bond the frame of the appliance to the neutral rather than providing a separate Equipment Grounding Conductor in the circuit. If you look at the two types of thirty ampere receptacles used for dryer outlets in North America you will see that both the three wire NEMA 10-30R and the four wire 14-30R have the L shaped neutral terminal but only the four wire one has the terminal for the round ground pin of a NEMA 14-30 Plug.
-- Tom Horne
Use a hammer and smash the plug into the socket.
I got a better idea, why not hook up each switch to Dori's nipples and she could tell you if it's 30A or 60A.
No tardlet. The OP is better off hooking his dryer to the dedicated circuit that your vibrator is using.
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