I was wondering why the Kill-A-Watt wattmeter that I normally leave things in the room plugged into was beeping. Turned out that having an electric kettle and a space heater both on on a circuit were enough to drive the power usage over the 1800W that a normal US household circuit can provide, and that apparently the thing beeps in that case. It let me flip off the kettle before the circuit breaker flipped, which was nice.

I think I might look into a low-wattage, vacuum-insulated (to help compensate for the fact that the heat will have to be put into the water over a longer period of time) kettle.

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    41·
    12 days ago

    I’m pretty sure both of those devices are intended to be the sole device on a circuit. It’s the only way you can get enough power for them.

    The instructions should note this, but who reads those? Haha

    I run into this in my kitchen (which was built before code required microwave on its own circuit).

    I can run either the espresso machine (1100w) or the toaster oven (300w) and microwave (1000w) simultaneously. If I forget and run all 3 it will blow the breaker.

    Fortunately my morning routine is coffee first, then use the toaster oven, then microwave. I only found out they were all on the same circuit by changing my routine.

    Neat the kill-a-watt caught this for you.

      • tal@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
        1·
        12 days ago

        Apparently the original Easy-Bake Oven was 200W, then dropped to 100W, then moved to some sort of dedicated heating element.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy-Bake_Oven

        The original Kenner Easy-Bake Oven was heated by two 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, one above the food tray and one below.

        The idea was that the cake would bake more quickly and evenly if heated from both sides. Later models used only one bulb, leveraging convection from better interior heating dynamics to achieve the same results.

        In 2011, the last version to use a 100-watt incandescent light bulb was replaced by a new version with a dedicated heating element, named the Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven. The replacement was due to the availability of alternatives to the incandescent light bulbs that heated previous versions of the Easy-Bake Oven.[23] It was feared that newer lamp requirements would render all models that used light bulbs as their heating elements obsolete because lamps would no longer be available. (The company never provided initial or replacement bulbs.)[24][25]

        investigates

        Looks like the heating-element-based variant is still 100W:

        https://consumercare.hasbro.com/api/download/E6120_en-us

        ELECTRICAL REQUIREMENTS:120 Volts AC only – 60 Hz. 100 Watts

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      12 days ago

      I can run either the espresso machine (1100w) or the toaster oven (300w) and microwave (1000w) simultaneously. If I forget and run all 3 it will blow the breaker.

      Hey, guess how I found out my office with all my computers was on the same circuit powering the air-fryer we had on the patio? This was our last place, too, a 2018-build high-rise.