110 to 220

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Ruskin

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Great site! You guys rock...it's almost like I found a new family. May all of you always have fair winds and lots of beautiful sunrises!
Now after compliments, you know what's coming...
I am moving from Canada to Med. My shore to boat connecting line is geared to 110V, which will have to be changed to 220V.
What do I have to do and how?
Thanks and God bless........
 
I don't know the answer, but welcome to the forum.

You might want to dig into the Practical Boat Owner - Reader to Reader and do a search for 110v or 220. The search bar is near the bottom of the page. Whatever you do, don't repost the question because you will get flamed out by the long-standing forumites that think a newbie should already know forum etiquette.
 
One option would be to get a 240 to 110 transformer and keep your current (sic) cabling and 110volt items.

Once you are on this side of the pond then you could add a couple of 220/240 volt sockets for any electrical items you buy over here - all suitably fused and labelled of course.
 
When I moved my US boat to UK I added a step down transformer. You can buy weatherproof units that are designed for use on building sites where they don't want 240v in a wet environment. This gave me battery charging and 110v sockets. The frequency remains 50 cycle and not 60 cycle so there would be problems with operating 60 cycle appliances with inductive motors from this supply. You can, however, put 120v, 60 cycle onto your ac sockets via your inverter and run frequency sensitive items that way.
 
I guess that you won`t have much in the way of demand so a transformer purchased and fitted before you leave would be the way to go with the right output for over here.
 
Welcome to the forums.

Ist you need to look at what you have, because some battery chargers are actually dual voltage, either switchable or automatic sensing, if yours is luckily one of those that means that apart from running anything directly off the shorepower AC you are OK. Then you need to look at what you have on board that requires 110v specifically and decide if you can either do without it or could buy European 220v stuff cheap enough to simply replace it. Otherwise you are down to stepdown transformers or the like as others have said, probably it all depends on how long you plan top be here and what you can either replace cheaply or do without until you return. Be careful too of 220VAC it is dangerous stuff to mess with. In our case we have a fairly sophisticated DC and AC set up, but could if we chose to run quite well on 12v DC on either 110 or 220 AC as our charger is dual voltage, we would simply buy cheapo fan heater, coffeemaker, table lamp bulbs, hairdryers etc to suit.

PS.....I forgot to add that the TV, Laptop etc will run off the 12vDC-220v inverter we already have. If you have a USA TV on board it may not run anyway irrespective of voltage as the transmission standards are different, even between countries in Europe as well as between EU and USA.
 
I went the other way when I got to Key West heading north up the East coast... Frankly rather than mess around with transformer et al and assuming your wiring is good I would just go 220v for everything - buy an new battery charger - DVD - telly - microwave and I guess change the breaker from a 110 to a 220.

I tried the transformer/inverter or similar route and found it expensive - the items that you need to go 220 are all pretty cheap to buy. You will be in Europe for a while and frankly that is the easiest solution - I think!

Others may well disagree

Michael
 
Our Crealock 34 has a good standard US 120V 60Hz 30A system. Before crossing from Canada to the UK in 2002 I looked at installing a permanent Olsun 120-240 transformer, but couldn't afford that. So I bought a small portable transformer from MAYS in Horta. It worked for a while but was underrated for the continuous load, which includes water heater, ceramic space heater, battery charger, plus smaller intermittent items. After it failed in the UK, MAYS, to their credit, refunded my cost. I replaced it with a larger portable unit, special-ordered from the supplier who makes them for the local power tool shop near St Katharine Haven in London. It's heavy to lug and stow when underway, but still works fine. In Paris I needed on-board 240V for high-speed modem and another heater, so I jury-rigged a split in the 240 from the dock and ran another cord in. The best thing, if you have the time and money to do it, is a system that provides both voltages. For most loads, e.g. my Newmar battery charger, the 50 Hz 120 works fine. But check your manuals. My computer and printer, both relatively new, have power adapters that don't care which voltage or cycle the power is, so simple adapter plugs solve that problem.

There's a useful thread headed Energy, in the Discussion Board on www.ssca.org. The best posts there are by Jack Tyler, who was docked next to us in London. He also has an excellent paper detailing all the options for using European power on a boat wired for North American power, posted on his own website: www.svsarah.com/Whoosh/using_european_ac_power_aboard.htm

When are you coming over? Might see you in the Med after we get there sometime this summer.
 
Are you moving permanently to the Med to a specific country or just cruising and then moving on. There are specific rules about what needs to be done for a permanent move.
 
A standard tool transfomer will do the job fine, it will also give you the benefit of isolating you from the mains- better safety and protection from stray currents, only thing to watch is that Europe is generally on 50Hz wheras the US and Canada is 60Hz. This may or may not matter for some things but most likelt not to. TV in Europe will be PAL or Secam so buy a set that will run on that, only other point may be that DVD's won't run due to regionalisation.
 
For DVD region just google your DVD player and you should find how to make it multi region, my yamaha was open tray then on remote push 9999 followed by region number i.e 1,2,3,4 or 0 to make it multi region. No more wrong region error messages.
 
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