Home inspection information your home inspector should provide. How many amps and volts do you need? Let’s TechTalk about this for a while.

The more amps you have in a home, the more electrical devices you can have in use at any given time. The typical standard for modern usage is 100 amps; less than 100 amps may not be adequate for your needs. Large homes, and homes with central air-conditioning or electric heat will need more power, typically 150 to 200 amps. As an analogy, think of amps as a tunnel, twice as many cars can travel through a tunnel with two lanes than a tunnel with one lane.

Volts determines the types of electrically powered devices that can be used in a home. Lights, small power tools, small kitchen appliances, bathroom appliances, small room air-conditioners, etc. utilize 110 volt power. Electrically heated homes, electric ranges, large room air-conditioners, central air-conditioning, large power tools, clothes dryers, etc. utilize 220 volts. Going back to our analogy of tunnels, think of a small tunnel as one that is large enough to accommodate cars, think of a large tunnel as one that is large enough to accommodate trucks; that is, the small tunnel is analogous to 110 volts, and a large tunnel is analogous to 220 volts.

Every electrical service has some amps and some volts; the typical average home needs 100 amps and 110-220 volts.

Now that we have talked about amps and volts, let’s not forget the electrical distribution within the home. The more circuits you have in a home, the less the chance that a circuit breaker will trip or that a fuse will blow. For example, an average size home with only seven circuits is much more likely to have overloaded circuits than the same home with fourteen circuits. Even if there are enough amps and volts in a home, it’s important to be able to adequately distribute the power throughout the home. Going back once more to tunnels, the more tunnels that are available to accommodate traffic, the less chance that a traffic jam will occur; similarly, the more circuits, the less chance that a circuit breaker will trip.

Want to take a stab at an electric service question? Which of the following will consume more power, a 110 volt appliance drawing 10 amps or a 220 volt appliance drawing 8 amps. Write to us tell us what you think and why, we´ll write back.

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