In the UK I have seen outlets in bathrooms that had a US style plug and warnings not to plug in anything but a shaver into them. A co-worker of mine says that he has plugged his laptop into these for charging before and it usally works. But the last time he did this it drained his battery. What’s up with the shaving adapter? Why only shavers? Could it have damaged his laptop? What voltage is this outlet running at anyway and why does it have a US style plug?
I can’t give you the full answer but I can do some of this. UK shaver sockets can be either 115V or 230V (or both) and the ones allowed in bathrooms (the only electrical sockets allowed in bathrooms) contain an isolating transformer. They’re marked as Shaver Only as they can’t supply much current through the transformer.
The theory is they are safe even if you drop your electrical device in the bath :dubious: . The 2 pin socket ensures you don’t plug - say - you’re hair dryer in in the bathroom.
For some reason British regulations have a thing about electricity in bathrooms so we often have pull cords for light switches.
ps Think this is right but I am not an electrician!
Are the shaving outlets in the UK different from the ones in continetal Europe? My freind swears that he had successfully charged his laptop from this outlet before. Any electricians out there who can explaine this low current transformer thingy? Why don’t they use ground fault interupters like we do here in the greatest country in the world? I mean, at least we can use blowdryers over here in our bathrooms. It helps keep us free!
Yes they are different from the rest of Europe.
And within “the rest of Europe”, outlets in Switzerland and some parts of Italy (and maybe elsewhere) are different from the rest. And in those parts of Italy it’s easy to get an adapter (no need to change voltage, it’s just shape that’s different) but the Swiss hide them.
You can still run into 110v outlets in Continental Europe, but soon they’ll be considered historical enough to call the fellows at the local archaeological society.
UK shaver plug pins are too close together to fit into European mains sockets. Just looking at my US/Australia to UK adapter, I am surprised that you can fit a US two-pin plug into a UK shaver socket. The pins are only about 10mm apart, but because they’re flat I suppose you can bend them apart sufficiently.
The shaver sockets I have seen abroad have a dual setup where it has two round holes for European pins and the edges of the holes have flat slots for US-style plugs. It looks like one hole but will accept either type of plug. See this photo for an example from a UK electrical parts outfit.
The regulations date from the days when British houses didn’t have consumer units with MCBs and RCBs Good old fashioned bits of fuse wire did for us - and a fuse wire won’t melt quickly enough to save you from electrocution when you drop your hairdryer in the bath.