All the power points inside the Cottage went dead last night! Something must've tripped the 16-Amp fuse that protects the five power points which are all on the one circuit.
Thanks to the international co-operation between the Italian Alessandro Volta, the Englishman James Watt and the Frenchman André-Marie Ampère, it wasn't hard to work out how many Watts a 16-Amp fuse can handle: simply multiply the Voltage (240) by the Amps (16) and you know that 3840 Watts is just about the limit (this little calculator makes it even easier).
So where were those 'heavy guns" that drew the juice? I made a quick survey of what's plugged in:
Surprisingly, the television uses a mere 60 Watts; the fridge another 100 Watts. The toaster kicks in with 750 Watts followed by the microwave of 1000 Watts. Amazingly, it's not the electric heater that tops the list with 1970 Watts but the electric kettle that weighs in at 2200 Watts.
Put on the microwave, the kettle, and the heater all at the same time and their total of 5170 Watts will surely zap the fuse!!!
The “trick” is not to run the microwave and the kettle both at the same time while the heater is running!
