ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Does South Africa....

...still use those two-pin 5-amp round pin plugs for their electric appliances?

I know they use the BS-546 15-amp (16 amps in RSA) and 5 amp three-pin configs. But I have a sort of old plug (made out of modern plastic) here that is just two pins, marked "Made in RSA" and rated at 5-amps, 250 volts.

If South Africa followed BS546, I would not be surprised that they use the 2-pin 5A plugs for items like electric shaver outlets in bathrooms as in the UK.

Sven, Is it one I sent you attached to a string of 240V Christmas lights?

They were obsolete when I arrived in South Africa in 1982 but were still available in hardware stores and might still be. They were only ever used to plug into adaptors like the one below – I never came across two pin outlets in the walls but I wonder if early adaptors allowed them to be plugged into a lighting fixture which in the earliest homes were often the only source of power in a room.



The plug Sven is talking about is the one on the left. On the right is a Schuko plug which fits the same holes. Let’s just say the one on the right is to illustrate the hole size and spacing as it has previously been pointed out that I have put a class one plug in a class two hole! Just shows how important it is to develop a fail-safe design!

That adaptor is now used more commonly to accept two pin Europlugs that seem to appear on all imported class two equipment in South Africa. This Europlug adaptor design has been superseded by one that incorporates the six-sided raised shield that envelops the Europlug and prevents me from plugging in either of the two variants illustrated above.

Hutch, yup. Exactly that kind!

That's weird. The plug I have seems fairly modern - probably 1980s or 90s or so. It's made out of modern plastics. Maybe there's still a "replacement" market - or at least was at the time?

I've seen pictures of the Europlug-to-BS546 adapters with the recessed sockets.

2-pin 5-amp plugs were still a fairly common sight in the electrical departments of stores in Britain well into the 1980s.

The 3-pin BS546 versions are still manufactured today, but come to think of it, I haven't seen 2-pin plugs in the likes of the MK or Crabtree catalogs for a while.

That means BS546 5A ungrounded plugs would plug fairly well into old ungrounded Sockets from Austria/Germany. The prints specified 4mm pin holes, but all but one outlets I have acceot 4.8mm pins. Trailing sockets won't though.

T-Ranger:

I've noticed that too. While we're at it, has anyone ever seen a 15-amp TWO pin plug?

I know there were 2-pin configs for 2 amp and 5 amp...I'm just wondering if there was one for 15 as well.

You know something? Thinking about this, I'm glad the UK switched to the square-pin 13 amp plugs.

Hutch, no the one on the light string you gave me is a flat green one.

This thing is white, with a round face. I found it in a local electrical/lighting shop. Obviously it was removed from something because when I opened it up there was still wire stuck in one of the terminal lugs.

But both of them have the same pin size and spacing.

Yes! In the street I moved to with my parents around 1971 both our old "fixer upper" house and another across the street still had some pre-war 2-pin 15A outlets fitted (the type with the outlet on top and a switch on the front).

I'm not sure when the 2-pin 15A went out of production, but I would guess around WWII time.