Changing Us/european Plugs For British Ones - Identifying Wires

[joko]

I am changing a 2 pin plug for a 3 pin on a hard skin remover gadget.

However, there are only 2 wires and they are the same colour.
its kind of like speaker wire... a bit thinner than a normal wire containing a thinner brown and blue wire.

They're both white and the only difference is all along the edge of one is various words and numbers etc, and on the other there is a thick grey broken line
like this ___ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____

can anyone tell me which is live and which is neutral?

thanks

[Hymie]

As a class II piece of equipment (having no provision for an earth connection), the polarity of the mains supply is unimportant. So it does not matter which way around the wires are connected.

[KARL]

For practical purposes it almost certainly does not matter which is which as the item will be "double insulated" and will work perfectly well either way without posing a safety risk. Best practice would be to unplug it as soon as it is not being used.

[EDDIE51]

The US uses 110 volt supply, Europe uses 230 / 240 volts.
You can't run a US electrical item on European voltage or vice versa without a transformer ! Trying to use a US gadget on a European power supply will cause it to burn out! DON'T DO IT !!!

[goodgoalie]

Found out the other day that the reason it's virtually impossible to buy an electric kettle in the USA is because they use 110 volts, and the water would take too long to boil! I'd always wondered why they always use stove-top kettles.

[Jackdaw33]

Very interesting, GG.

[douglas9401]

I remember in the '60s my granny, who lived in a wee highland village, had to put t'kettle on at least half an hour before anybody wanted tea because of voltage issues in her area.

Oddly though, she had very smooth feet.

[goodgoalie]

Eddie, I used to use a really good American-made bass amplifier (Acoustic), and I had to cart around a transformer everywhere - really annoying that the amp couldn't easily be converted - and I was constantly worried that the transformer would go missing.

[EDDIE51]

You can run a kettle off 110v but you need to double the amperage.
European kettles use 13 amps at 240v so it would need at least 26 amps at 110v .

[goodgoalie]

Never did understand the volts/amps thing. I seem to remember that there are several formulae about them, but no idea what they are!
And, Eddie, what was actually happening inside that bleeping transformer??

[EDDIE51]

Slow boiling US kettles are a real problem it is discussed here.
http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2012/04/16/why-kettles-boil-slowly-in-the-us/

[EDDIE51]

Transformers explained here
http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae427.cfm
Sorry I can't find a way to explain it more simply.
Remember Volts x Amps =Watts
So for a UK kettle 240 x 13 =3120 watts
US kettle 110 x 13 = 1430 watts
So less than 1/2 the power and takes more than twice as long to boil the same amount of water!

[goodgoalie]

Many thanks for the link, Eddie - will have a good read of it tomorrow. Am off to bed, having had explained to me one of the many small things (US Kettles) I'd always wondered about!

[Old_Geezer]

gg

for DC: Volts (the ability to push electrons around the circuit) = Amps (a measure of how much movement is occurring) * Ohms (the resistance of the circuit to having a current passing through it). Or in short V = I * R

Known as Ohm's Law.

It similar for AC with some modifications.

The higher the voltage the more current you get for a set resistance.
The higher the resistance the less current you get for a set voltage.

[dannyk13]

You could always buy an adaptor plug.

[donny48]

An adaptor plug would make no difference to the fact that the supply current is higher than the appliance requires, only a transformer would do this.

[dannyk13]

Donny, I was referring to the European part of the post

[EDDIE51]

If it is a European unit there is no problem, it is the reference to US that is a worry.

[donny48]

I would imagine that with both wires being white then it is probably going to be American and 110v.

[donny48]

Somewhere on the appliance should be a rating label and with any plug change or re-wiring then this label should be read and understood. Blindly going in to make alterations without fully understanding can kill.

[Garaman]

13 amp doesn´t come into it, that is just the maximum rating of the wiring. An average kettle is about 1800 watts so with a supply of 240 volts it would draw about 7.5 amps, whereas an 1800 watt kettle connected to 115 volt would draw about 15.5 amps.