Spain campsite hook up reverse polarity

[Fisherman]

Currently he does anyway

There’s no end to this is there
Trevs a bit of a live wire, but he’s always wired up properly.

And he’s not paranoid.

 

[Fisherman]

I understand there's a limit to what can be realistically expected but in Fisherman's case the light he was working on was "definitely related to his job" and a greater level of care and safety should have been undertaken.
I'm not saying that the guy who tampered with the wiring was without any blame but knowing that doesn't really benefit fisherman's family when he's dead.
As I said sparks of often cut corners and make assumptions but checking for a' live neutral' in fishermam's case was dead easy (excuse the pun), he was complacent and skipped it at his own peril. He could/should have avoided the belt, it could have been fatal and I'm sure his bereaved family would get little satisfaction from knowing that he wasn't completely to blame. I'm sure they'd get considerable satisfaction from knowing he'd dodged a bullet when he spent a few seconds checking for an unexpected 'live neutral' .

I reckon you are being completely unrealistic given all the circumstances.
You fail to acknowledge the light was previously installed by myself.
Thus I had every reason to assume that the wiring remained safe.

You also have made no mention of comments stating that reverse wiring is acceptable, hence why I got involved in this thread, out of concern that some may agree with such comments. You seem more intent in highlighting my failures, which although technically correct seem unreasonable. Given the same set of circumstances I doubt if I would do anything differently, and I doubt if any other spark would have checked for reverse polarity on a circuit they had previously worked on.

What this comes down to is common sense, and being reasonable, both of which are lacking in your posts. Wildebus made salient points.

No more from me on this thread, suffice to say reverse polarity is dangerous and is never safe practice in any circumstances.

 

[merl]

Agree reverse polarity is completely wrong and unacceptable practice.
What the guy did is plain stupid, he should have been prosecuted.
Not sure how a post can be technically correct and lacking in common sense at the same time but hey ho.
I've been a qualified sparks for many years, My thoughts are not founded on nothing.
Never meant to upset you, sorry if I did.
Olive branch/Hand shake/Hug.

 

[Glandwr]

Let's face it without our obsession with polarity and refusal to to adopt double pole switching where necessary the good old british 3 pin plug would have no reason to exist. And god forbid the dastardly Europeans will have won. MT would turn in her grave.

 

[Tezza33]

I must admit that I never worry about reverse polarity, even older Hymers were equipped with the right equipment to work with reverse polarity so no worries in the van although I am very careful at home

 

[trevskoda]

A lot of negative threads on here and I positively will say nout as I'm the salt of the earth, so dont pin anything on me or I may blow a fuse.

 

[Moped]

I must admit that I never worry about reverse polarity, even older Hymers were equipped with the right equipment to work with reverse polarity so no worries in the van although I am very careful at home.

It the case that leisure vehicles produced by British manufacturers encounter polarity issues but those produced by manufacturers in mainland Europe do not?

When viewing another forum on this subject a member stated that their fridge would not work if polarity was not correct. Answers suggested that there might be something wrong with the fridge which was Dometic.

What puzzles me is that if polarity is such a non issue as some here seem to suggest, why are there a lot of commercial enterprises making a living out of offering devices that warn about this or check that things are wired up correctly for leisure vehicles that run 240v electrics?

Getting back to the original question about polarity with Spanish hook up posts, we have now actually found our first post at the sixth attempt where the polarity is fine.

So on this snap poll only 16% of Spanish hook up posts are wired correctly.

For Spain how representative is this generally?

 

[Tezza33]

What puzzles me is that if polarity is such a non issue as some here seem to suggest, why are there a lot of commercial enterprises making a living out of offering devices that warn about this or check that things are wired up correctly for leisure vehicles that run 240v electrics?

If my van was British built then I would use a polarity checker, I have one in my toolbox from when I built my own in the early nineties, it was built on a low budget so didn't have the best equipment in it.
If I work on any electrical items in the van they are unplugged or the EHU cable removed
You don't need to spend a lot to check polarity in my opinion, a simple socket tester and a spare lead wired with the live and neutral reversed would be enough for me

There are also companies that make a living selling gas alarms that warn you if someone pumps gas into your motorhome, if there is a market for something then they expect motorhomers to pay a high price.
My thoughts on that are the only people that get gassed while sleeping have at least £17.000 worth of valuables according to newspaper reports, so travel without valuables and you can buy a normal gas alarm,

 

[Moped]

You don't need to spend a lot to check polarity in my opinion, a simple socket tester and a spare lead wired with the live and neutral reversed would be enough for me

This all blew up for us last year when we visited an aire in Seville and used their 2 pin hook up socket. For some reason the Sargent charger kept overcharging the battery and the trickle charge stage did not start.

Kept going up to 15.4v at which point the 12v power systems turned off automatically to protect the van electrics. 240v circuit fine it was just the 12v that kept powering down.

Even turned plug upside down and this still happened. Made me think if the phasing or cycle rate or voltage was out which was affecting the charger electronics but no real way of checking.

Turned charger off and all was well.

The next aire we visited all was fine. No issues.

Visited same Seville aire this year and noted that all the hook up boxes had been changed. Didn't use their power even so.

I now have the polarity checker and made up reverse lead as described above. It does not just check polarity but other issues also.

Basically if weird things happen I want to have an indication why. I also now have a voltmeter/ameter also to check circuits if need be.

 

[MEB]

If we use a reverse polarity adapter on a Spanish site which ISN'T reverse polarity, is it harmful to our appliances ?

 

[Moped]

The issue is appliances won’t be earthed but they should run OK. Just make sure you unplug if there is a risk of you touching anything live within the appliance.

A lot depends on your power unit and how it reacts to reverse polarity power entering it. Normally there will be a warning light indicating reverse polarity when you turn the AC systems on for battery charging and heating.

I suspect the issue mentioned above we had in Seville was not linked to reverse polarity but was linked to issues with the solar charging system and the battery charger. A replacement Sargent power box sorted it.