Some years ago I got this adapter. Countries with Schuco standard outlets has this to prvent ungrounded devices to be plugged in where grounding is imprtant, as in bathrooms etc. The scaring thing is that someone suggests to plug in that one on the washing machine cord to prevent the GFCI to trip.
dsk, That device almost looks like one of them cheap travel adapters that you can buy from the usual suspects on the Internet.
One thing I really hate about using anything like this, is that they are usually a compromise in not only mechanical strength, but also the connections inside these devices are often not made with the same current-carrying capacity and end up with a sloppy connection at best, which will eventually cause a fire safety hazard.
In my opinion, any sort of adapters should be banned, the world over. If you don't have the correct socket-outlet or the correct plug, ask yourself why niether of them are present and make the required changes.
You are absolutely right in all hences. I got one, and heard the story, so I have tested it on gfci circuit, It does just disconnect the ground wire, and I am not i presses by anything. Here in Norway we use scuko otlets, and old ungrounded plugs do not fit. I live in an "older" house (1989) and rooms without water does only have the old outlets. Usually no problem. So this was just for testing, and for the confirmation to ay No! to a persen wanting to use this on a washing machine.
Last edited by dsk; 03/29/2012:25 AM. Reason: Spelling
Good thing I didn't feel that way when we went to New Zealand. I had a NZ adapter to a NEMA 5-15 and a plug strip. It was how we survived. I only took things with us that had wide mouth power supplies (PCs USB chargers etc) and everything worked fine. I doubt my total connected load was ever over an amp or two tho. I am not sure I wanted to buy all that stuff for a 3 week trip. A 5 buck adapter was all I needed.
Greg, I had to read your post at least twice, I was wondering how on earth you managed to use your gear here on a 230V system.
And yes, you'd get that with them universal devices that work on pretty much 100-300V (I think it is). The reason I mentioned the whole adapter thing in the first place was that, what used to be EnergySafe here (which is now under WorkSafe/OSH), banned the importation and use of certain types of travel adapters, back in 2010(?)
This was due to people importing cheap appliances that were never meant to run on 230V single phase, buying an adapter and lo and behold, the kitchen/house goes on fire, mainly because the load current through the said adapters was well outside of their design current. However, I'm talking about high current appliances like toasters and kettles, although I'm not sure why you'd go through all that bother, when you can buy a decent toaster or kettle here for NZ$20-30, that will work perfectly fine and not go on fire, if you're lucky.
What do we trust or not regarding safety and markings?
I have marked with red those institutions where I have generally found good quality, so I usually trust things with those marks. The other ones may be OK, I just have no experience with those.
So the 2 more that is not approval markings: The CE marks.
CE China Export are just that, and almost equal to The CE from Europe. The European CE was ment to be a quality mark, but it is (based on strict rules) just a mark that tells you that the maker states it to be according to regulations.
The "Ground fault remover" has none of these, and the most important, the visual inspection and we always shold do does not tell me about more than medium minus quality. Since I don't want my house or where I am to burn down I would prefer this and equal units to be banned.
When traveling abroad I use to take a power strip frome home and change the plug to the standard in the country I am visiting. Regarding voltage and frequency I have to pick what to bring, usually it is phone, pc and shaver, all those are universal so it is no problem. Sometimes I bring shoe dryer, and that has to be for the right voltage. The wattage are usually of 15 W so it is no big loads.
Ah yes, the good old adaptor for using class 0 appliances in rooms with Schuko sockets! They never conformed to any regs because Schuko was purposely designed to prevent the use of class 0 plugs but they were incredibly common back in the day! Germany banned essentially all one-piece multi-way adaptors in 1959, mainly claiming that Schuko sockets couldn't take the mechanical strain of more than one plug. They remained legal in Austria, which was by then moving away from the German VDE regs, introducing the first edition of the new OVE regs in 1962, but I don't know for how long. You can still find them on many flea markets but I rarely see them used any more.
Travel adaptors are very hard to govern as they're often not sold in the country they're to be used in. I try to avoid them completely and have a large collection of home-built adaptors consisting of a local earthed plug, 1 m of flex at least 1 mm2 and a Schuko trailing socket. They're not perfect either though, those with 10 A plugs could be overloaded, at least in theory. In practice, I doubt anyone would carry around a load exceeding 10 A while travelling. I do wish my NEMA 5-15 adaptor had more than 18 AWG! A 18 AWG IEC lead was all I had available though. I didn't even realise that until I cut and stripped it, the outside diametre is roughly equal to H05VV-F 2.5 or at least 1.5!
Sorry to bring an old thread up again, but I missed the end of this due to being busy at work. To call a device like this a "Ground Fault Remover", misses the point, although they are sold as this.
What they are is a "Ground Reference Remover", now if you think about that for a second or two, by using this device, you are now removing the most important electrical protection (aside from a circuit-breaker) available to you. This device will also not trip any RCD, unless there is some sort of an imbalance between the Phase and Neutral conductors inside the equipment.
So, if the appliance or whatever you plug into it has a direct Earth fault (sure, not a lot of things have metal bodies on them these days), you've lost the one thing that will possibly alert you to the fact that there is a dangerous fault within the equipment.
With respect to these "approvals", with respect to Electrical test equipment, I insist on stuff that at least has a "mark" from VDE, you know that it has been tested adequately.
However, the Chinese did themselves no favours at all, by basically copying a well-known and respected approval mark, with the slightly "different" CE-mark. This in itself has "cheapened" the whole CE-mark and also the fact that this copying was never really challenged, because the Chinese are still using their version of the mark. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Chinese, but let's be honest here, surely they could have come up with something a LOT more different than that!
I do wish my NEMA 5-15 adaptor had more than 18 AWG! A 18 AWG IEC lead was all I had available though. I didn't even realise that until I cut and stripped it, the outside diametre is roughly equal to H05VV-F 2.5 or at least 1.5!
In vector drawings I've made in my spare time, SJT 18AWGX3C gets an outer diameter of 7.36mm, versus: 7.01mm for H05VV-F3G1.0 8.27mm for H05VV-F3G1.5 10.04mm for H05VV-F3G2.5 However that's not including the fabric lining still common (though by no means universal) in American cords, with which I could see it approaching the diameter of H05VV-F3G1.5 (though probably not 3G2.5).
Or if it's ST 18AWGX3C (though such a heavily-sheathed cord seems an unlikely combination with IEC 60320), that's 8.88mm diameter in my drawing.
For the those adapters, I guess they ar made with almost no focus on safety. Regarding wire sizez, I dug out an old table from befor calculations (PC) was so much used, the electrician just looked in the table and wired after the standard. Melting fuses was still std. at this time. Here in Norway this worked well.
Greg, I had to read your post at least twice, I was wondering how on earth you managed to use your gear here on a 230V system.
And yes, you'd get that with them universal devices that work on pretty much 100-300V (I think it is). The reason I mentioned the whole adapter thing in the first place was that, what used to be EnergySafe here (which is now under WorkSafe/OSH), banned the importation and use of certain types of travel adapters, back in 2010(?)
This was due to people importing cheap appliances that were never meant to run on 230V single phase, buying an adapter and lo and behold, the kitchen/house goes on fire, mainly because the load current through the said adapters was well outside of their design current. However, I'm talking about high current appliances like toasters and kettles, although I'm not sure why you'd go through all that bother, when you can buy a decent toaster or kettle here for NZ$20-30, that will work perfectly fine and not go on fire, if you're lucky.
I am a firm believer in buying appliances made for and approved for the country one is living in, come to think of it have not seen any threads anywhere in a long time about using American dryers in the 50 HZ world, not going to work.
I totally agree, Rollie, We've had people come over here with ovens, dryers and what-not, EXPECTING an appliance like this to work. While you can wire a US oven here as 230V, doesn't mean you should. The clocks on 60Hz ovens don't keep time like they should over here.
When I started this thread it was to point out how a so called travel adapter, probably designed to help you out to charge the phone or shaver, even a hair dryer is to much for it, but it may easily be misused, and it may cost lives.
The thread has been wider, and I use several US units not meant for use here in Norway. Mainly because it is not available here. All equipment made for DC with adapters are really no problem, most of the adapters are made for 100-240V 50-60Hz and draw far less then 1 amp so if I do not care to change it, an adapter will work well, I usually tighten the springs to get safer connection, and glue the plug adapter to the original adapter. I also have equipment instruments and test tools only made for US standards. Then use an transformer 230 to 115V. 60 Hz transformers may get problems with 50Hz due to a need of more heavy cores, so I watch them carefully, but it is still a risk.
The adaptor I was talking about was home-built - I cut the IEC connector off a NEMA computer lead and replaced it with a Schuko trailing socket. IMO that's the sturdiest kind of adaptor you can get.
The adaptor I was talking about was home-built - I cut the IEC connector off a NEMA computer lead and replaced it with a Schuko trailing socket. IMO that's the sturdiest kind of adaptor you can get.
I believe that is the best adapters you may get, make them yourselves of High quality parts. For me here in Europe I do not see any difference between Canadian and US listed plugs but I know that they are not officially accepted in the other country if it does not have the national stamp UL/UR etc (We missed on that exporting some machines to US customers and sent them cords with only Canadian stamps and not UL (Many years ago from another job that I had at that time))
For Europe it is several markings, some are real after testing in an external institution, others the the maker says that it is OK
E.G. The CE marking tells that the maker has tested it by them selves, (China has a slightly different CE mark Chinese Export) German TUV, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish D, S, N or Fi in a ring are stating that it is tested by a certified institution. I trust those marks as I trust UL CSA and UR. Still it has to look safe to. :-)
These days I see plenty of Chinese knock off devices with no "legal" listing mark. Some have counterfeit markings, some none at all. These usually show up in regular retail outlets or Amazon type places, not a real electrical supplier.
I totally agree, Rollie, We've had people come over here with ovens, dryers and what-not, EXPECTING an appliance like this to work. While you can wire a US oven here as 230V, doesn't mean you should. The clocks on 60Hz ovens don't keep time like they should over here.
American clothes dryers & cooking equipment require a neutral and a 120/240V center tapped system, the heating elements work just fine, but 120V motors & controls & lights will not work for long on 230V L-N.
These days I see plenty of Chinese knock off devices with no "legal" listing mark. Some have counterfeit markings, some none at all. These usually show up in regular retail outlets or Amazon type places, not a real electrical supplier.
Best course of action but pretty much impossible is to avoid ChiCom goods.
American clothes dryers & cooking equipment require a neutral and a 120/240V center tapped system, the heating elements work just fine, but 120V motors & controls & lights will not work for long on 230V L-N.
I installed (as was the customers wishes) , a 400V/ 240/120 centre tapped transformer on the other side of the wall to the switch-board (panel), this was not a small investment, it was sized to the loads that the customer told me he would have and I oversized it accordingly, because he didn't really know what he was talking about. This required a second panel, because you need to keep the "local" and the "foreign" stuff seperate.
What a nightmare that turned into, there were 3 phase pumps for water and sewerage, because the place wasn't on "town supply" , but a well and the outflow pump for the sewerage was 500metres down the road from the place, so that it could be pumped into the town sewer pipe.
I commissioned it all, up on livening the whole thing and got really weird readings from the 240/120V tranny, it turned out I'd got two of the connections backwards.
The guy's "wife" then said that I wasn't going to be paid, for the whole thing, because I was apparently incompetent.
They then bought the guy's "wife's" brother over from Colorado to "inspect" what I'd one. He told me it looked "pretty good", yet he was a telco technician.
I have 75% of what I'm owed, they don't even answer the phone or e-mails now and it's so far away that I can't go down and pull the pillar box fuses.
That describes how difficult this may be, and how important it is to know a lot of whats commonly used in both Europe, and USA.
I had to design a machine for the building of a bridge in USA based on European equipment, build it and travel over to USA and demonstrate and test it before we got it sold. If I failed we would loose ..lots. when I started I had never heard about 480V systems before, I did not know the NEC very well. (Still I had the 1987 bought on a holiday) so at least I had a interest of it. Ended up with making it as simple that it was possible to make it. A 480-24V supply and all the control gear for 24V. Then the motors should be made for 480V 3 phase 60 Hz, so ordered, but what did I get? Motors with label 400V 50 Hz . The motor maker, oh that I forgot, I send you e new set of labels! And YES! thats all and it works perfect. The bridge may be one of the most expensive in the USA, but it ended good and looks like a bridge designed for looking good and to resist an earthquake.
To that here 3 phase is more or less standard in every house, but maybe smaller service fuses than you use to have. My house has 3 phase 230V (with no neutral) fused 80A My cabin in the country side has equal system fused 63 Amp. (that's more than usual for a cabin) and my main fuses are 3*25A there.
The 240V single phase with a center neutral that seems to Common in USA/Canada is not understandable for the common European without extra know-how.
I guess that is the opposite for for Americans coming over here.
The British Isles do have some split-phase supplies (230/460 V) in rural areas and rumour has it the Greater Berlin area had some 115/230 V supplies until very recently, although that might have been a wildly inaccurate description of a 133/230 V 3-phase system. Countries with 16.7 Hz railway power supplies use 231/462 V split-phase supplies for switch track heaters (to keep the points from freezing shut in winter), I have no clue why the inventors of that system chose such a strange nominal voltage.
. The motor maker, oh that I forgot, I send you e new set of labels! 
And YES! thats all 
