German purchase compatible with UK electric ?

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I have bought a bargain electrically operated massage/heated office chair from Germany. The snag is it came with a two pin AC adapter with a small round jack, 230V input / 12V output. How can I connect this to the mains in UK?
 
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buy a UK "wall wart" (the black thing you have with 2 prongs) but make sure its out put is the same as the german one (perhaps its not such a bargain now)
 
Maplin do a "Euro Converter" .This may be what you need. Maplin code MW44X
 
those euro converters are nice but i think he has a wall wart and i doubt you would fit a wall wart into one

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=22928&TabID=1&source=15&WorldID=&doy=2m3
you could use one of theese but its a bit bulky

you could also open up the shutters with a screwdriver and stick the wall wart straight in a UK socket I think it safe to do this as i doubt a plug fuse would provide any real protection against faults likely to happen in a wall wart anyway (the main use of the plug fuse is protecting the mains flex on the appliance and wall warts don't have a mains flex).
 
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bl$%% H*^* plugwash! :eek:
I know you and I do this sort of thing regularly, but this is advice to someone who may not know when not to do it (visions of live Knitting needles etc.)
Sadie, ignore the above and either borrow your husbands razor adaptor, or if you are without, go to woolworths and buy one (adaptor), and plug it into that. It will be fine, and will cost less than a pint. (and don't let plugwash tell you to wrap the fuse in the adaptor in kitkat wrapper - sorry plug!)
Alternatively, and neater and less likely to fall out at the key moment, if you are going back to Germany or have friends over there who can post something here, then hop into BauHaus or similar DIY place, buy the cheapest extension lead you can, and when its back in the UK, cut the plug off and fit a UK 13amp fused plug in its place.
(I recklessly assume from the name you are female, and being from Germany that you are familier with the price of beer?, apologies if not so! )

regards M.
 
Thanks for all your answers, I don't know what a wall wart is but if a shaving adaptor will work I know where to buy on of those. I don't have any German connections, just off work with too much time on my hands and access to the internet. I keep having great ideas getting into things that I haven't thought through properly and haven't the knowledge or the other half to ask, hence me asking all sorts of stupid questions on here. I am grateful to you all taking me seriously and giving good advice. I'll buy you all a pint with the money you have saved me not having to get the professionals in for silly things. Thanks
 
I've never heard the term "wall wart" but, from the context, it's a slang term for one of those plug in adapters that come with so many gadgets these days.

Time was, you bought some electrical equipment and it had a mains lead coming out the back - with a plug if you were lucky. The trend now is to remove the power supply section from the equipment and put it in one of these wall warts. This gets all the nasty voltages out of the equipment which is no bad thing. Unfortunately, instead of a chunky mains lead you have a flimsy length of bell wire that tangles abominably before losing an argument with the hoover.
 
felix said:
This gets all the nasty voltages out of the equipment which is no bad thing.
More to the point it also gets rid of voltage selection switches and means that the same basic product can be sold anywhere in the world without the need to put in a sophisticated switched mode PSU.
 
mapj1 said:
bl$%% H*^* plugwash! :eek:
I know you and I do this sort of thing regularly, but this is advice to someone who may not know when not to do it (visions of live Knitting needles etc.)

just to clarify you stick the screwdriver in the earth hole ;)

i just wish that some manufacturer would make a socket with a fuse and shutters that would open for a europlug.
 
Or perhaps everyone else should just adopt our superior plugs? :D

Don't MK sockets have some proprietary system where to open the shutters requires the earth pin AND correctly sized/shaped L&N pins? You could use that as a starting point. Could be some money in it!

How could you provide an earth though? You could have an adaptable socket of some description, but then you might as well have an adaptor. :D
 
europe doesn't have a standard earthed plug anyway (though the german standard is starting to replace local socket types in some parts of europe) but they do have a standard non-earthed plug which is suitable for most consumer electronics goods.

Eurostecker.jpg

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Eurostecker.jpg
 
With tongue firmly in cheek, why don't we adopt some varient of the europlug, we could have the 13A fuse in the socket , rather than the plug, on 32 A ringmains, and unfused adapters would no longer be a threat.
Furthermore on 16A and 20A radials we could eliminate the fuse altogether, as carrying 1.25*13A for 30 mins at 25 deg C, and not blowing, while blowing at 1.8* 13A within 30 mins (which are the upper and lower spec limits for the BS1362 13A fuseaccording to a Bussmann datasheet I have) is such a crummy spec that a 16A (and even a frisky 20A )B type breaker will blow first anyway if it comes to a race.
Then we can all feel truly European.
I note with amusement that in a back handed way both our plug and socket regulations, and part P section 0.2a allow for this by accepting any standard from another EEA member country as 'equivalent' to ours.
Of course to be truly British, our Europlug would have to be a slightly different shape to everyone elses....

good night
M.
 
OK, so we put a 13 amp fuse in the socket instead of the plug - and use 13 amp flex for everything!

Actually, that's not nearly as stupid as it sounds. How many people bother to put the right fuse in the plug? Time after time I come across low power equipment with 16/0.2 (or smaller) mains lead and a 13 amp fuse in the plug. What have we got to lose? Since a lot of 13 amp cable is orange why not standardize on this and ban the use of this colour for anything else? Result - all proper mains leads will be up to the job and any cowboy ones will be instantly recognizable.

The other side of the argument is that this whole electrical safety business is over the top. I still have a clear mental picture of my mother 'plugging' her iron into an adapter in an overhead light socket - and before you ask, no it wasn't Class Two!

All things considered, the British system of fused plugs and earths is pretty good. It's just a shame that we have live and neutral instead of the more obvious balanced 120-0-120 supply.

I wonder whether, in a few centuries time, similar arguments will rage over the safety of domestic fusion rings? "Will owners of the deuterium-lithium model 39C please use the beryllium reclamation plant on Mars. Anyone found fly tipping within the Moon's orbit will be liable to a fine of blah, blah, etc."
 
felix said:
OK, so we put a 13 amp fuse in the socket instead of the plug - and use 13 amp flex for everything!

Actually, that's not nearly as stupid as it sounds. How many people bother to put the right fuse in the plug? Time after time I come across low power equipment with 16/0.2 (or smaller) mains lead and a 13 amp fuse in the plug. What have we got to lose? Since a lot of 13 amp cable is orange why not standardize on this and ban the use of this colour for anything else? Result - all proper mains leads will be up to the job and any cowboy ones will be instantly recognizable.
the rest of the world happilly connects thin mains flexes to sockets with no protection other than the cuircuit protection (which is admittedly usually considerablly lower rating than here but usually more than 13A)

felix said:
The other side of the argument is that this whole electrical safety business is over the top. I still have a clear mental picture of my mother 'plugging' her iron into an adapter in an overhead light socket - and before you ask, no it wasn't Class Two!

All things considered, the British system of fused plugs and earths is pretty good. It's just a shame that we have live and neutral instead of the more obvious balanced 120-0-120 supply.
do you want a transformer for every few houses like the US have?!

the thing with commoning neutrals (whether split phase or 3 phase) is you can only do it once within a segment of the power distribution system (ie between transformers) IE you can make 240V availible with most of the effificiany advantages of 480V or you can make 120V availble with most of the efficiancy advantages of 240V but if you tried to combine the two then some of your cuircuits will have to have a neutral thats no so neutral and will have a higer max voltage present than the voltage they are supplying.

felix said:
I wonder whether, in a few centuries time, similar arguments will rage over the safety of domestic fusion rings? "Will owners of the deuterium-lithium model 39C please use the beryllium reclamation plant on Mars. Anyone found fly tipping within the Moon's orbit will be liable to a fine of blah, blah, etc."
;)
 
I'm more pessamistic about the future - once the oil really starts to run out in a decade or two, and we all start seriously feeling the cold, I think we will re-evaluate the whole safety thing with much colder eyes.
I have spoken to quite intelligent people who see only two answers to the problem, both nuclear, either we nuke half the world and stop them wasting the energy, or we build many power stations.

Personally I would rather see more burning of plant matter like straw or fast growing trees, as the carbon cycle is closed loop, and possibly the bio-gas type options like the Gohar cow dung digester (apparently 1 kilo of dung ferments to produce a couple of cubic feet of gas, so we only need ~2 cows per person to supply our personal energy needs.)
Otherwise we have to lower our quality of life expectations to a little above the Indian level, which we will find uncomfortable.
That said, I will be teaching my daughter, when she is old enough, how to grow vegetables, cook on open fire, prepare rabbits and chickens etc, just in case it all goes belly up and she needs to look after me in my old age!
 

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