Funky Dutch Electrics

[username#132]

I'm hoping to move to The Netherlands before the end of the year but my friend over there was living in an appartment with non-earthed sockets and she says it's common in old houses. Should I be worried about running my British stuff over there? Should I buy myself a nice pair of rubber clogs?

 

[plugwash]

you should be no more or less worried about running your british earthed equipment on such a system than you should be about running equipment thats supposed to be earthed that was originally sold over there.

i belive they consider it acceptable over there for existing installations to be left like this provided they have rcd protection (we brits don't but then we have had high safety standards on electrics for a lot longer).

if using a lot of earthed appliances within touching distance of each other try to make sure there earths all connect together even if they don't connect to earth (e.g. plug them all into the same earthed powerstrip).

 

[username#132]

Thanks for the advice. How does it help though, to connect the earths of appliances if they're not connected to earth?

 

[plugwash]

one word of caution with that advice actually you don't just wan't to connect the earths of the appliances together you wan't to connect them to any other metalwork you can touch at the same time that has a connection out of the room.

normally we rely on earthed equipotential bonding with automatic disconnection of supply for protection. but earth free equipotential bonding can actually be as good better provided everything touchable is bonded together. the most important thing is to stop potentials occouring between bits of touchable metal, that can't really happen if they are bonded together.