The Idiots' Guide to EHU

[SlubberOfDave]

OK so from the get go I would just like to point out that I am not getting EHU because I don't go in for such fripperies as electricity.

But

You know just for general knowledge and learning and procrastination purposes pretend I might be slightly interested in it and tell me how it works, and two way and adaptors, and blowing fuses if you plug in a normal kettle and all that jazz.

and

Does anyone heat up there tent in a very safe and non fire disaster manner? Just out of interest. Nothing more.

We went the home made route. Caveat - DP was an electrician. So we bought cable, commando plug & DP wired it up to one of these kind of things. There was an advantage to this DIY method at the time, but I don't have the faintest idea what it was now

We have found UK EHU to be fine - can run anything we have tried including heaters and hair dryers.

We have found French EHU to be a bit trippy and only useful for fridges & charging phones etc.

Can you plug a UK bought ehu into a French/German/Forrin socket, or do you need different bits for different parts?

And what happens if you trip it? Does someone come and give you a stern look?

ahem

Have you been camping before ?

EHU is good. Very good. I take a toaster and a kettle and then if, say, you were to run out of Gaz (not that you would), you could always have a bit of toast and a brew.

It's also very good if you then want to boil water for a hot water bottle or to make pasta - saves wasting hours of gaz.

I've just bought this

I did trip it occasionally when I was trying to charge a light, blow up a bed and make a cup of tea all at the same time, but that was my own fault for trying to multi-task on a camping holiday when everyone knows you should slow the pace down.......

The flex all winds up back into the reel, like a normal extension lead. You plug in at various points on the site, if you do happen to trip your point, you can just go straight over and switch it back on again.

I always take a small portable heater to heat up the children's sleeping pod as it can get a bit damp and cold. This just takes the chill off.

I think even Forrin has EHU.

Yes you can use the same EHU wherever - the commando plug is standard throughout Europe. We were warned that occasionally you can get male/female ishoos with the plug so have both but have never had a problem yet.

When I tripped it a lot in France I had to fetch the Sacha Distel lookalike to come open the box & flick the fuse. But that was no hardship

Sorry, x-posted with you.

I've got this, which is utterly fantastic

This is all very theoretically interesting.

So say, just for example purposes only, if you were camping in the UK could you charge up a phone, have a light and use the little heater all at the same time? Or would that trip it? Do you have to do physics sums with the amps or volts to work out if you are safe?

No I found I could use the heater, plug in the light and charge an I-phone all at the same time. It wasn't so keen on the kettle and the heater at the same time though.

Where possible don't have more than one 'big' thing at once ie charge stuff during the day, heat the water for bottles and put them in bed then save your power for the heater last thing so you are all toasty

mm

I will think more on this.

There may be more questions forthcoming.

Ok.

Well I'm not on here much but I will look out for your posts.

each campsite will have different amps which you need to check out when booking. the lower the amp eg 10amp will run things like kettle, cool box, telly, lights, etc but 16 amps will run all of this as well as hairdryers, chargers, and everything else all at the same time. if you buy a EHU from camping shop they generally come with 3 sockets so this will limit how many you can have on it. electric fan heaters have to go on higher amps and I'd always switch them off overnight.

if it trips you can usually just flick the switch on the fuse box with no trouble, but if you keep everything switch on then it will just trip again.

As notwaving said, a rule of thumb is don't have two heater things on at the same time, eg kettle and fan heater or (when we were in France) multicooker and kettle. That could be cos in france we had 6-10 amps and in England you usually have 16 amps. It's never been any trouble to be charging stuff and then heat something or have the fan heater on at the same time.

It's not always easy to flick on the fusebox again. Quite often we've found that they're locked and you have to go and get someone to unlock the box and flick the switch themselves. If the box is locked, try not to overload at night!

Sometimes in France they have the normal French two-pin plugs at the EHU stand so you have to get an adaptor that goes from the UK blue bit into the French EHU stand. Sometimes they have blue plugs and two-pin ones on the same sites. Also, you should be OK 99% of the time with a 25m lead, but in France sometimes the distance between you and EHU is more than that. I think if that is the case they would normally lend you an extension, but that didn't happen to us when we overnighted at a French site this year.

If we're paying for EHU then I try to use as much it rather than gas as it's a fixed amount and I'm paying it anyway. I think the case is different in Germany and Austria, though, where you pay for actual consumption.

We have ehu and have had no probs running the cool box, fan heater and watching telly (whilst charging iPhone as telly has a dock). Wouldn't be without now.

Thanks everyone. Something for me to ponder upon over the non camping winter months.