Electricity and Transformers

Karamix
By Karamix

We relocated from USA recently and we brought bunch of Kitchen appliances with us. They are designed to run in USA Electricity.

We were Told that there are local electrical supply stores that Sell Transformers which convert the local voltage (220 volts- 50 Hrtz ) into USA voltage (110 volts- 60 Hrtz) .

we would appreciate your help. If you any of these stores and where they are located.

Please help

By margaret07• 9 Mar 2007 06:54
margaret07

Now I know why people told us not to bring our 110V appliances.

By 10thFloor• 7 Mar 2007 20:28
Rating: 5/5
10thFloor

I bought some at Carrefour in City Center Mall. They are 90 QR for 500 watt. Then you also need to stand there and figure out what other adapters and such you need to get them plugged in. They also have little ones for individual low power items.

Be advised that the transformers will convert the VOLTAGE down to 120, but will NOT change the frequency from 50hz to 60hz. Most of the time that doesn't matter.

I went to some of the electric hardware stores in the old town and didn't find anything much there.

Be careful about how you wire stuff up. Some of those plugs with two round pins sticking out are different sizes than others. The transformers come with one wire that has two plugs on it. One plugs into the transformer and the other into an adapted mains outlet. I'd advise you to scrounge through the bits at Carrefour and buy some plugs and wire them yourself. If you try to force one of the two pronged European plugs into that transformer, it might look like it will go, but it won't because the pins are bigger.

ALSO, I found that the hot and neutral are reversed here from the U.S. standard outlet. The standard here is U.K.

Looking at a standard U.S. outlet, with the round ground outlet at the bottom, the neutral is on the left and the hot is on the right. The neutral is the longer of the two slots.

The standard U.K. socket also has three slots. The odd one is the ground, and the other two are neutral and hot. (Sometimes called "Load") They are usually oriented with the ground slot UP, the neutral on the left and the hot on the right.

The reason that I am rambling on about this is that I bought an adapter that allowed me to plug more than one cord into it and found out, via smoke, blown fuse, and tripped breaker, that it was possible to short circuit just by plugging things in that were wired differently.

Be careful, and good luck.

By ragan• 7 Mar 2007 19:54
Rating: 4/5
ragan

Check in Annabi Electrinics or Bashir radio at Arab Roundabout

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