How To Convert UK Hook-Up cable to Euro Domestic electric socket - Online Offgrid

Stuck with a UK cable... in Spain?
Here's how to convert your hook-up cable!
Please follow these instructions at your own risk.
Proceed with caution:
Great! So, now we're at the campsite so now we ought to connect up the electric!!!
First of all, you get these standard caravan and motorhome hook up cables you can purchase at any good store in England, (like DIY stores, B&Q’s and caravanning dealerships as well). So the female end of the cable just plug into the campervan… that's how I connected up.
Of course, the other end of the plug is the male version and a lot of the European campsites have a normal mains connector, the sort of thing you'd see in a hotel or a house in Spain or France…
Now we're in Spain, and at least half of the campsites we've come across have had these connectors which means this is absolutely useless… but of course, if you get prepared before you come over, you could get a camping hookup cable!
It's very useful as well at home, it means you can connect up your motor home or caravan to the house, it just protects them nice and easy.
Okay, so that goes into here but of course English plug European connector… so “What do you do?”
Well one of the things you can do is, (if you're thinking), “Okay, I'll just get an adapter, and put that onto the end of an English plug.”
And if you've ever used adaptors before, you’ll know that they're not the most sturdy of connectors… anyway, you can put it on and that does solve the problem, albeit it's a little bit of a dodgy connection, and that's what we had done.
Then I checked the rating on it, which says that it can take up to 10 amps.
Ok now I'll explain here how you work out the amps...
It's the amount of power that you can put through the adaptor before it starts to melt, because electricity creates a lot of heat. So, I worked out that this is 10 amps for thinking well that should be okay with that just even a one killer more two kilowatt heater, but if you look closely at this you'll see that when we put this in within about half an hour it burnt out and electricity went off.
It took me a while to work out what had gone wrong… I thought that system had gone wrong!
But, it's because this had melted inside obviously the connection had broken. So this isn't the best solution!
Plus, here's the quick formula which is where math FINALLY came in useful from school! :)
When you know what the power of the heater is because you'll see on the side of the box… it will say a “one kilowatt” or a “two kilowatt” heater. Basically you divide that figure by the voltage, and the whole of Europe pretty much uses the same voltage of 240 volts and you get the current that that particular device will draw.
This adaptor burnt out around about two or three it should never have happened!?
So, what do you do? The only other solution is to buy the correct adaptor online. It still has an earth, so those are the two pins that provide all the power and you'll see on these two sides these are the bits that basically earth and make it safe.
Which means, your earth earthing your motorhome as well, which is really really important!
Now, if you don't have one of these, again DON’T PANIC… you can go to a store like I did in Spain. They're Spain’s version of B&Qs, etc. You can buy just the plug like you're connecting, and with English plugs and what you're doing there then is just to take off the English plug, and put on a European plug…
Basically I put this plug on when we arrived so that we could connect electrics and they're very simple. You basically just undo the partially remove the top of the plug to the point where… yeah, we can't actually take that out so that the plug can now slide out… so what happens is you actually push the plug through (like that).
Now if you've ever taken off an English plug before, you'll know that there's a brown cable, a blue cable, and then inside there there's a green and yellow cable which is the earth cable.
It doesn't actually matter which is brown and which is alive (or blue) as long as the brown and blue cables are connected to those two terminals, which are those two screws there and there, and then we need to make sure that the earth cable is in that point, which is connected to these which is those outside terminals we showed you earlier for when you're actually plugging it in.
Then, once you've done all that, you clamp it down nice and tight. You see, all I've done is use this very very similar clamp as you'd get in an English plug, to make sure that it is the what the bit you're gripping instead of all the tension being on the individual cables. You then push it back up into the slot, making sure they slide into the correct points.
Then we just tighten that up and...
You've got yourselves a European ready to go plug!
So there you go... that's how to get converted in Spain!
Bye for now...
Miles&Tamra
Online Offgrid

[@InverhavonRailways]

The better plug for Europe is the hybrid version, that fits all over France, Spain and Germany. It has a hole for the French/Belgium earth pin and the side clips for everywhere else. Most pre made adaptors sold in the UK are fitted with this type.

[@zeez9053]

Excellent video so much good needed information .Thanks for your patience for the info from video description aswell.Was wondering about which colour cable to which pin in Euro plug but you said any pin would work .Great ! Thanx again couldn’t have asked for better intro to the subject 🤘🇬🇧from TeesideUK

[@brianglobe1]

Just wondering if your in Scotland or Wales? What should we do? Didn't know uk was only England

[@paulaherne3915]

I've never seen one that says Made in Scotland or Wales.

[@dufonrafal]

I don't know how this ended up in my recommended, but since I'm here:
Actually, 230V except in the UK.
Adaptors are a bad idea for anything more than a phone charger really.
This one in particular, I don’t know why it says 10A on it, but it’s clearly a « Europlug » or CEE 7/16 which is rated for… 2.5A. Also, it’s not grounded.
The cable you bought is not compatible with many European outlets, you should look for one that is compatible with both type F (German) and E (French) outlets, and for those the live wire need to be on the right as Type E is polarized ;)