Extension lead

[Mike]

Well I have since, I bought the demounable been using a 13A socket to round camping socket extension lead to power up the electrics when at home straight into the mains. I have often thought why is the red light on the consumer unit on. When it use an orange lead it's off, I have several times checked the wiring on the 13A socket lead all seemed OK. As we are planning a trip to France in Aug (yes I know it will be busy but work commitments etc mean this is the best time for us!) I have been reading about reverse polarity sockets on French sites. Realised yesterday that in the back of the garage is had a socket testing plug some 20 years old with neon lights instead of the more modern LED ones but hay it works. Blow me the sockets in the demountable all showed up reverse polarity when on the aforementioned 13A extension lead. Swap over to ther Campsite lead, all showing good and red light out on consumer unit!
Realised red light is not just an "on" light it was telling me something
Checked out the 13A lead all wired up correct to the markings in the back of the plug and socket. Only explanation is that the markings are incorrect on the round end of the lead. Strange, anyway all good now and in all honesty did not seem to matter running Reverse as long as you don't think a plug is off as the Nuetral is still Live. I think!,
Never assume all is okay when you inherit a lead from someone is my wisdom of the Day

[sabconsulting]

Good you have sorted it.

Very good advice too about not assuming everything is wired correctly when you inherit a camper. My 12v system was wired wrong and burned out a cable when the fridge was switched to 12v because someone had wired the fridge the wrong way around and turning it on effectively shorted the 12v battery connection to the ground chassis .

The 240v electrical items you plug in won't care which wire is live and which is neutral since it is alternating current and the polarity switches 50 times per second.

The risk is thinking something is isolated when it might not be.

Typically mains switches these days are two switches in one - they cut both the live and neutral wires. This makes it a lot safer in case someone has wired a plug the wrong way around.

However, with a camper can you guarantee someone hasn't done a homer on it and used an improper switch? I.e. one that ONLY switches the live side. If that were the case AND someone wired the live and neutral the wrong way around you would be effectively switching off the neutral rather than the live. Because it breaks the circuit it would turn off whatever it was powering, but the electrics of that turned-off thing would all still be at 240v. So you might think it was safe to open up and fiddle with when in truth it was actually death on a stick

Worse for every day risk would be an unconnected earth wire or worst of all someone wiring an appliance so that neutral goes to earth - would probably work fine in most cases, until you plugged into a socket where earth was disconnected - the offending device would then pull any metal enclosures that were earthed up to 240v so you could electrocute yourself on the casings of these items.

Steve.

[rubberrat]

As above. We carry a continental 2-pin converter (rarely used though unless staying at friends houses as most sites are the 16A bluepin connector)
We also have a swap over led with reverse live/neutral for the many French sites with "That'll Do" wiring - i.e any old how.
Although it almost doesn't matter, for the sake of a socket tester and a home made reverser you may as well pack them.

Socket tester is excellent for finding faults - is it your unit or the site post? tester will take a lot of guesswork out.