Paul, who are you quoting above – has the post been withdrawn? From a South African perspective, wiring the Christmas lights to a BS546 (16A in RSA!) is quite normal – though it usually involved removing the cheesy two pin BS 5A molded plug commonly supplied with the sets. The plug pictured below is stamped “220V – 3A” and the lights are certainly bright when plugged into the 240V supply I have here! I suspect this is a set designed for mainland Europe with an old BS plug thrown on for the small South African Market.

[Linked Image from frontiernet.net]

Some would plug their lights in using the pictured adaptor that is still very common over there, although you will not find any equipment supplied with BS two pin plugs – other than Christmas lights!

These adaptors get used by people to plug in Europlugs, but they’re not the right fit and make for a dodgy connection. Having a dislike for adaptors, once I knew something worked, I cut of the molded one and fitted a proper plug.

[Linked Image from frontiernet.net]

As far as the US lights being dangerous, I don’t know that I would agree. There are enough of them about on houses all over North America in all weathers and I don’t hear of too many problems - any US locals wish to comment?. The most dangerous part is putting them up. The best doctor in town here fell off his ladder last year putting up outside lights and is now a paraplegic.

Depending on the weather, my illuminations have included an internally illuminated icicle with no tripping of the GFCI. US 115V lights should work well (and very safely) on an outside UK setup, using the work-site centre-tapped 110V transformer system.

[I have just measured the xmas plug and it is slightly undersized pin-wise compared to a BS 5A two-pin although this is compensated by a slightly wider pin spacing. By further comparison, I can see that an old BS 5A - 2 pin has the same dimensions as a modern UK shaver plug (BS 4573) and the South African xmas plug does indeed fit very nicely into a UK BS 1363 1A shaver adaptor!]


[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 12-15-2003).]