Reverse Polarity??

Malta1

Hi All

Been reading on an English forum about reverse polarity being an issue with French Campsites........some on the board are saying it is an issue and some are saying it is not an issue

Whats the general consensus??

Also, where do you get polarity testers??

peasant

errr ...I'm no electrician, but there is no Plus and Minus on 230V

Or do you mean that they put current on what should be the earth wire?

I'd say that as long as you use the international CE connectors (the big blue ones with the three pins) you should be safe as they're all wired to the same standard and they are common on most campsites.

Malta1

Seemingly the problem seems to be that in some cases, the live and neutral at the plug are reversed and they get around it by having 2 fuses, one on the live (as we would) and one on the neutral.
Im not an electrician either but if the live and neutral are mixed and there is a problem with your appliance, your fuse on the live will blow but there is still current flowing to the appliance as the current is flowing in on the neutral wire

To be honest, I was surprised when I read the forum (I can dig out the link if you like) but some people are adamant it is a huge problem. They even go to the extent of having polarity testers and 2 sets of hook-up/connection cables with them (one which they have purposely wired incorrectly (ie wired live wire to neutral pin and vice versa).......obviously this connection has to be well labelled

dollydishmop

Yikes, definitely some thing to think about before heading abroad :eek:

peasant

Well, my camper has the ususal "FI" trip switch like any home has at the fuse box.

Any untoward currents and it trips ...or at least I hope so


EDIT
Just did some research ...the trip switch goes off on anything above 30 milliamps on "earth" ...reckon that should be safe then.

If you haven't got one ...get one ! (and not just for going to France)

bushy...

Electrical supply shops sell testers that show L+N reversed , no earth and so on , look like a plug with three small indicator lights on it.
Or you could fit a small neon indicator and wire it between the neutral and earth , it would light up when you plug into a reversed setup.
I think this would be a better idea than wiring one between the live and earth to indicate normal operation , if the indicator failed/shorted and the earth was dodgy/non-existant it wouldn't drag the earth up to mains level.

You could make up a short jumper cable for the site hook-up you use with the live and neutral reversed and use it when you stay in sites like that.

peasant

bushy... wrote:

... if the indicator failed/shorted and the earth was dodgy/non-existant it wouldn't drag the earth up to mains level....

...and that's when your trip switch would kick in and turn everything off !
Which I would deem far safer than faffing about with intermediate cables, indicators and such like.

Seriously ...I cannot imagine that somebody would wire a campsite the wrong way round on purpose. Standards for polarity are the same all over Europe and if the blue CE connectors are used, there should be no problems at all.

If somebody bodged the wiring (for whatever reason), surely that would get fixed after the first report of a malfunction and not left like that.
(Even the French could not be so "laissez faire" that they would risk electrocuting their customers.)

My suspicion would be that whoever started this discussion had their own camper wired in some dodgy fashion and got into trouble because of that and posted about it, blaming someone else for his mistakes (as is common:D )
The internet being the internet, this has now spiralled out of control and all of a sudden all French campsites are wired with wrong polarities and everybody panics and rushes out to by "indicators".

zagmund

I have seen this reverse polarity thing in some of the UK magazines too, but it *never* made any sense to me. Like one of the earlier posters, I couldn't see how a wiring fault like this could remain indfinitely. After it happened the first time you would go tell reception. After reception gave a Gallic shrug of the shoulders and said that's the way we do it 'ere in zis campsite you would up sticks and leave. Eventually they would have no customers left. This is totally seperate from the whole health and safety thing - you can't go around doing custom wiring jobs for a very good reason.

I just can't see it happening unless there is some weird sort of French camping fraternity who get their kicks out of bugging aged British campers making their first foray onto the mainland.

It *is* possible that there are poor standards in certain sites, but I cannot believe that it is widespread enough to warrant bringing custom cables around. You don't worry about the wiring when you arrive at a hotel in France (or at least not the ones I go to) so why should campsites be any different ? Far more efficient would be to write to the magazines, local authorities, etc . . . and either get them bad press or get them to up their standards.

z

bushy...

It is just one 3ft cable and it would mean you can get on with it until they get it sorted.

Malta1

Cheers all