Converting UK plugs to Australian ones

[Guest thefarrs]

Hi

 

We arrived in Sydney at the beginning of March and our furniture etc all arrived last week.

 

I need to arrange for the electrical items to have an Australian plug put on them in place of the UK plug that is currently there. I have been told that it is illegal to do it yourself and it should be done by a registered electrician over here.

 

What has anyone else done regarding this? I am sick of having adaptors in every plug socket and really want to get everything converted asap but am concerned about how much this is going to cost if I go to an electrician.

 

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Cara

[RockDr]

From another thread I seem to recall it's only illegal to make changes to the actual wiring of the house. It is possible to change the plugs on appliances yourself (the moulded plugs such as mobile phone chargers etc may be a bit more difficult). The main issue is that if you change a plug yourself, and that plug ends up causing a fire, then you won't be covered by insurance.

 

Take a look at your appliances and how the cable fits into the appliance. Many of these are likely to be standard cables, e.g. the C7 on this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320

You may find that rather than changing plugs, in many cases you could just change the whole cable for a few dollars more and not have the insurance issues.

[Exile]

I wonder what the record is for not changing plugs over.

I have lasted 4 years and I still have all my UK plugs on, and only a finite amount of australian adapters in ongoing semi-regular rotation.

 

This awesome achievement is made possible with nothing more than than steely procrastination and rock solid lazyness.

 

Can anyone beat that?

[Guest chris955]

I have a few things that we bought over almost 11 years ago that still have UK plugs, I reckon they knew something. :wink:

[phil]

My mum's been here 10+ years and there's still UK adaptors all over the place.

My ship's not arrived yet, but along with the quite small number of electricals I've packed a good few UK four-way mains strips so (subject to sensible amperage) I can use one adaptor and then plug in four UK appliances.

I think what RockDr says is worth checking out - it might be easier/cheaper to just purchase replacement cables where you can.

One thing I've found infuriating here is that all mains plugs (in this house anyway) are so close together that if you plug for example, a mobile phone charger, you can't use the socket next to it. Who designs these things? Unbelievable.

[Guest chris955]

You are allowed to change plugs but NOT to alter any fixed wiring eg wall sockets etc.

[newjez]

I find the easiest way is to get a UK power board, (multi adapter), and change the plug on that. Then, you can plug up to six UK appliances into the UK power board, without changing their plugs. This is especially useful for chargers for phones and games which have a transformer plug. You can't cut off the transformer plug and stick on an Aussie one. But you can plug it into a converter power board.

 

It works going the other way too. Just take several Aussie power boards with you and change the plugs on these.

[Guest guest30038]

One thing I've found infuriating here is that all mains plugs (in this house anyway) are so close together that if you plug for example, a mobile phone charger, you can't use the socket next to it. Who designs these things? Unbelievable.

 

You can buy double adaptors at bunnings that face opposite ways ie if it's a double socket you can put a left facing one on the left socket and a right, on the right. This then gives you 4 sockets with the two furthest allowing room for you to plug in transformers etc.

 

kev