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In the UK the ground is used by the power stations as the neutral conductor, and that is why we receive a shock if we are earthed and touch the line connection of a plug or appliance.  We therefore need an earth connection as a safety measure.

In most other countries the neutral and line are isolated from the ground, so an earth is not required.  You would have to touch both wires to receive a shock.  As long as all the appliances being used are double insulated, i.e. do not have an earth connection, then reverse polarity should not matter.

> but surely most of our equipment IS earthed, eg, fridge, water heater, charger, space heater, kettle, tv, <

A lot of them are, but certainly not all. E.g the waterheaters for vans (on the continent) usually do not have earth connection. In this case usually the flat plug is used, although there are also non-earthed plug that look like earthed plugs, destined to fit in such contact. These can be recognized by the missing metal parts for earth-connection (in the Netherlands on the sides of the plug, UK I think had a third pin, France has a pin in the wall-plug hole and a hole in the plug.

My fridge, fanheater and oven are earthed, my kettle is not earthed. So if you want to be sure look at the plug.

Quote: Originally posted by allengenealogy on 12/3/2007

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Well I really opened a can of worms here. thanks to all

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Not really.  I've seen threads of discussion regarding this very query on a number of web-sites, and I've yet to read of a definitive answer. Personally, I'm going to stick to checking the polarity, after all, it's not too hard to do.

This maybe a daft question but if you find out the polarity is not correct( i guess you can buy a tester) how do you reverse the polarity.

Garry

I carry two Euro-UK adaptors, one reversed and clearly marked as such. My EHU has a red warning light that comes on if the polarity is reversed so I simply swap adaptors. Similarly, I carry a short length of cable with the standard male/female blue ends attached but the polarity reversed. So when I`m in France it doesn`t matter whether the hook up boxes have the standard blue connections or the Euro ones, or whether the polarity is reversed. I can deal with it in seconds.

None of the above is expensive and saves faffing around when you`ve arrived tired and have an hour or two of setiing up to do. As to the safety aspect, I`m a firm beliver in taking all sensible precautions while dealing with electricity even if it does involve shelling out another few pounds to do so.  Ultimately if I blow my hairdrier or something up it`s only money, but God forbid my five year old daughter should be holding it at the time.