UK Plug fuse in mainland Europe

[asalcedo]

I have moved to Spain from the UK.

I have brought with me plenty of UK appliances.

All of them have the standard UK fused plug.

My house in Spain is of recent construction with modern circuit breakers and RCDs.

I know well the purpose of the UK fuse, explained at 'All about fuses'

I am considering cutting the UK plugs in all appliance power cords and replace them with the Spanish/ European one that does not have a fuse.

I really do not think I am compromising much in terms of safety or other. If there is a current overload, the circuit breaker will cut the current. Surely, it will not be at the same amperage as the fuse, but it will certainly not let a fire or cable melt happen.

Additionally, I would have the appliances wired as they are wired in this part of Europe, no fuse at the appliance power cord, which further seems to corroborate that I am not very wrong.

Lastly, I think I would even be making things better. Most UK to European adaptors are rated 5 to 6 A. It is not easy to find 13A ones, which means that often times a 6A adaptor is used for easily 10 A.

At the very most I would keep the UK plug for the smaller rated appliances, up to 5A, where the flex may be compromises in case of a current overload. For bigger appliances, with a 13A fuse, it seems to me there is little advantage in keeping the UK plug.

In short, is it advisable to use in Spain the UK appliances with their original UK fused plug with an adaptor or is it safe to replace the UK plug with the European one?

Thanks,

Antonio

[therustyone]

Or you could take UK multi-outlet socket extenders out there and replace each plug top with a Spanish one, then there's only a fraction of the number of plugs to change.

OK, so it's not so tidy.

rusty

[David in Normandy]

When we moved to France I cut off all the UK plugs and replaced them with the appropriate French two or three pin plugs as appropriate. It sounds like the Spanish system is the same as the French system.

The only mistake was using a travel adaptor for a something rated at 1kw and the adaptor got very hot - dangerously so.

[Andy Wade]

The purpose of the UK plug fuse is solely to provide 'fault' (i.e. short-circuit) protection for the flex. Any overload protection required should be in the appliance.

If all your appliances are modern and have flexes of 0.75 mm^2 or larger then it is perfectly safe to fit unfused Schucko plugs to use in sockets where the building wiring is protected at 16 A. With modern approved flexes you will normally find the conductor cross-sectional area in the embossed markings on the outer sheath.

You need to exercise caution with smaller flexes such as 0.5 mm^2 or the old 14/0.0076 inch Which will not necessarily be protected by a 16 amp fuse or MCB. Any appliances using such flexes should be connected using a fused plug and adaptor.

Also be careful with extension leads, particularly long ones. The simplest, safest, advice is only to use extension leads which have 1.5 mm^2 (or larger) flex.

HTH

[Man at B&Q]

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , asalcedo writes

Why bother? The adapters are inconspicuous, dirt cheap, e.g. Ebay

170622046345, and you retain the benefit of the fuse.

[Gazz]

about the same as anyone in the forces being posted abroad, my dad had 2 postings to germany when i was growing up, anything brought from england had it's plug replaced with a shuko one, anything bought in germany (most of the items as it was so much cheaper over there) got a uk plug put on when we came back to england.

european properties usually use the radial wiring system, so you have a lot more circuit breakers in the box than a uk house, (my house here in england has 4 active breakers, one for all the lights, one for all the sockets (upstairs and down) one for the garage, and one for the kitchen)

In the houses we had in germany, the fuse box was about a foot wide by 2 and a half foot long, located at the top of the cellar steps, and it had a breaker for about every 3 sockets, the living room had 3 breakers for the sockets in it, fixed appliances had their own breakers and so on.

Dunno about mainland spain, but i remember when i went to tennariffe (a spanish island so i'd assume spanish electrical systems but could be wrong) they had 2 sorts of socket and plug, a standard 16 amp shuko for large appliances, and a smaller pin spaced shuko style for low power items upto 6 amps i believe,

Thing like tv's, lamps, radios etc were plugged into the smaller sockets, the portable air conditioner was plugged into the larger socket, as was the hoover and so on.

[Scott M]

I'd reckon on them being more of a hazard than the loss of a fuse.

[John Rumm]

Generally that should be ok. The plug fuse in the UK is not used for overload protection anyway (if that is needed it must be designed into the appliance itself), it just needs to protect the flex from the effects of fault currents (i.e. short circuits L to N or L to E) since you can't rely on the main circuit breaker doing this on a 32A circuit.

In Spain, without fused plugs, the main circuit breaker must also offer fault protection to the appliance flex. This restricts the maximum circuit capacity to typically 16A.

You would certainly be better off with the correct plug in these circumstances.

Yup - things with 3A flexes (not used that often these days) may not have adequate fault protection from the main circuit breaker - depends on the fault loop impedance at the point of use. You could make up a decent adaptor lead for these using extension lead components and a stub of cable.

Safe to replace, apart from the cases where the flex is thin 0.5mm^2.

[David in Normandy]

I don't know if the Spanish system is like the French one, but doing that could potentially be dangerous. The reason being (in France) that no distinction is made between live and neutral since the RCD breaks both poles. This means it is pot luck which feed is live or neutral at any given socket (and if two pin plugs are used for anything they can be inserted either way anyway). So in the worst case scenario a UK fuse could blow on the neutral leaving the appliance still live and potentially dangerous.

I had a nice whack once fumbling around in a narrow space replacing a blown cooker light - despite the switch being off - the switch happened to be on the neutral not the live.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Scott M writes

Nonsense. I travel in Europe a lot (for work and pleasure) and use them without issue.

[Scott M]

Oh, in their place they're ideal, I've no doubt. But for possibly using them, say, 24/7, shoved behind a cabinet on a high load device, I'd not trust them. They're a bit flimsy and exaserbate the problem of europlug's ease to fall out of the wall compared to a UK plug.

[John Rumm]

Another point worth noting with many is they are marked for use with Class II devices only - this may be just because they can't guarantee and earth connection, or it could be they don't even provide the contacts. In the latter case, then the adaptor would not be safe for use on earthed appliances.

[Graham.]

protection anyway (if that is needed it must be

the effects of fault currents (i.e. short circuits L

a 32A circuit.

May not be mandated for appliance protection, but isn't it true to say that choosing a plug fuse value sensibly having regard for the maximum current demand of the appliance rather than than just the capability of the cable has always been good practice?

The appliance manufactures seem to think so.

Take the case of three items I regularly install, all with supplied 0.75mm2 IDE cables

A Dell PC with a 5A fuse in the plug A Cisco router with a 10A fuse A Brother laser printer with 13A fuse.

Of course this might now create issues with interchangability. I would be interested to see your comments about the above.

[Tabby]

data wrong.

Fires occur with UK and Spanish systems. If you want to know the relative safety you could get hold of the spanish fire statistics and compare. Doing it the other way round, looking at the potential causes of fires, isn't effective, beacuse what matters is how many fires result, not whether certain causes exist in each system or not.

NT

[John Rumm]

protection anyway (if that is needed it must be

the effects of fault currents (i.e. short circuits L

on a 32A circuit.

been good practice?

Yup certainly, it still is good practice... if nothing else it makes for a smaller bang when someone sticks a chair leg through the wire!

The absolute requirement is that the fuse gives the flex adequate fault protection - a 3A flex would have a real chance of melting quite rapidly with a short on the end and a 32A circuit powering it. If the appliance needs overload protection, then it must be contained in it - since in most markets it won't have the luxury of a low rating fuse in circuit outside of its box. However there is no requirement that the protection built into the appliance be resettable. It can take the form of a one shot thermal fuse or other mechanism that if it does activate basically renders the appliance toast. In those cases, having a lower value fuse feeding the appliance may offer the chance of that blowing before the internal one shot protection fires.

(You can see why SATA became popular if the IDE leads were that size ;-)

Seems to be the norm for most IEC leads based on the the random sample I took of the leads I have sat on the spares pile here.

Seems excessive for a router (unless very high end). Having said that many of the IEC "cold" plugs and sockets themselves are only rated at 8 to 10A continuous.

Lasers often have high current demands for the fuser - especially it its the "instant on" type that remain cool when in standby and heat quickly on demand.

There was a time when it was more important than now, since smaller flexes were more common (presumably on appliances made specifically for the uk market). Most manufacturers targeting international markets seem to go for 0.75mm^2 flex these days since it will usually be fault protected by most 16A circuit breakers / fuses etc.

In a way its interesting that they bother - since its not an option for most of their sales of the same product into other markets, but it does follow the argument of best practice.

Interchangeability is an interesting one, since I don't think I have ever seen anyone check the fuse rating in an IEC lead prior to using it for whatever bit of kit they want to power. The fact that it seems to cause no problem in practice may just be a reflection that the vast majority of things with an IEC socket on the back (laser printers excepted) probably don't even draw 3A.

[Tabby]

[e-mail]...

verload protection anyway (if that is needed it must be

from the effects of fault currents (i.e. short circuits L

this on a 32A circuit.

ays been good practice?

In practice there's always a raggedy edge out there though.

- appliances without safe overload protection do exist, both new and historic

- wiring faults arent always dead shorts, hence 3A fusing does improve safety over 13A or 16A

- smaller than 0.75mm^2 leads are also in use on old equipment

NT

[Graham.]

.

I *knew* that didn't look right!

[dennis]

That depends on the router.. I have used them where you couldn't power them from a 13A supply and had to have bigger supplies fitted. And that was with more than one PSU so the load was spread across several leads. Routers range from household stuff to 120+G switching stuff, ie. from a few watts to several kwatts.

[Bob Eager]

More dennis fantasy.