poles apart

[mike_bryon]

Thanks YM and P Julian for airing the imprtant subject of polarity on the letters page in March YM ploes apart. Reply from Nigel Calder ia informative but how do I check the polarity of a shore side outlet?

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[snowleopard]

there are various ways of telling if a socket is wired correctly, hhere are a few:

you can buy a tester which fits into a 3-pin socket. it has 3 neon lights and the combination of lights tells you if there are faults with the wiring. it detects earth failure, reversed polarity, live failure etc.

if you have a mains tester screwdriver, switch off the socket and stick it in each hole in turn. if live and neutral have been reversed, one of the holes will still be live because normal switched sockets switch the live line only. if wired correctly, all the holes will be dead with the switch off.

american style plugs with 2 pins present a problem as there's an even chance of getting it wrong but they don't seem to care. i asked in an american electrical shop which was the live pin of a 3-pin plug: the answer was 'it doesn't matter'!

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[Talbot]

You can get a tester from a caravan shop which is designed for the european 3 pin socket. This should check the correct wiring of all three pins and I believe that there is a version that will reverse the polarity if necessary.

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