Mikey,
I sincerely hope your reversal lead is not as you say - switching earth and neutral is deadly.
If you need to correct polarity - you need to swap line and neutral - the earth is always connected to earth.
Please check - I'm hoping it was just a typo in your posting
Mike,
Polarity reversal:
In the UK, only the live wire is switched by household and caravan MCB and RCD trips - leaving the neutral wire permanently connected to the inside of any appliance.
In Europe both the live and the neutral wires are switched by their modern MCB and RCD trips. And since polarity doesn't matter for the correct operation of the AC mains appliance, power sockets are randomly wired for live and neutral - indeed in Holland and Germany - the Schuko plug can itself be inserted in the wall socket either way up - it truly doesn't matter.
When you take your UK caravan to say, Holland, then roughly 50% of the time the live and neutral wires will be crossed compared to what you expect.
This doesn't affect the safe operation of the appliance, but if there was a fault and the UK caravan MCB trip "flipped off" - then there is roughly a 50% chance that the neutral wire is still carrying power into the heart of the appliance.
And there is then a chance of electrocution if you start fiddling with the internals of an appliance without pulling the plug out of the socket. Don't do this anyway - even in the UK - unless you are a trained engineer
The correct solution to this problem is for UK caravans (and homes) to follow the European dual switching system (and cut both feeds). But in the meantime, you can protect yourself by checking the polarity and (if necessary) insert a polarity reversing cable between the site power and your normal hook-up lead.
In the list of examples you quote - live neutral reverse - is the situation where a polarity reversal lead is used.
You should take the following leads with you:
A - normal UK hook-up lead (with the blue IP44 connectors)
B - a short (1 metre or less) cable with a CEE 7/7 "universal Schuko" plug to blue IP44 socket - most sites in Holland will have the IP44 sockets - but a few (and quite a lot in France) will use an outdoor version of the household Schuko socket.
This cable lets you bridge the gap between Schuko socket and caravan hook up
C - a short (1 metre or less) cable with an IP44 plug to IP44 socket - with the live and neutral wires crossed at one end only - and this is your reversal cable
Then use cables A (and B if necessary) to connect the van to the site power
Then test polarity, and insert cable C if necessary to correct
Easy - and easy for us - we have an Eriba with dual switching so we just forget about this.
Robert
Facebook
Twitter