electrical safety

[Lizard]

When one buys an electrical appliance such as a weed-eater, vacuum cleaner, they often comes with a two-pin plug attached. My husband always removes these and replaces them with a 15 amp, three-pin-plug. He says he does this because they are not earthed. He claims that they cannot be earthed because there are only two cables. This doesn't make sense to me as there are still only two cables when he puts the 15-amp plug on.
In the instruction book that came with a weed-eater bought recently, it says, "Our products are double insulated to EN60335. Under no circumstances should an earth be connected to any part of this product." Can someone please explain to me what this means?
Are we doing something dangerous by replacing the two-pin plug with a three-pin one?

 

[Goobie]

No. Perfectly safe.

2 pin plugs are from the devil and should be banned in SA. Replacing it with a 3 pin plug makes it easier to plug into a wall socket and extension cords, it also makes far better contact with the wall socket than a stupid 2 pin plug ever would.

When connecting up a 3 pin plug, the earth (in your case) is still not used so the earth pin basically serves only to open up that safety thingy inside the socket.

 

[BCO]

Lizard, there is no earth wire that connects to the earth pin on the three pin socket, so nothing's earthed.

 

[Lizard]

Thanks, Goobie. It's a relief to know that what we are doing is okay. Of course the only problem would be if something went wrong with one of the appliances while it was still under guarantee. I don't think we would be able to return it as they would claim we had "modified" it.

 

[VanZan]

Some shops might try that one but the 3-pin plug is a SABS standard, and all you do is to point out that they are selling non-standard electrical equipment and you are going to lodge a complaint with the consumer council or something like that.

 

[Lizard]

Good one, VanZan. There was a time when one bought electrical goods and there was no plug of any sort supplied. Then I heard it became illegal to sell something without a plug. (I suppose some people were sticking the wires in the outlet!). So then they started using those two-pin goodies. Some of them tend to drop out of the sockets. I don't have shares in Boardman's so I am not trying to get them a free ad but I must say I recently bought a liquidiser/blender from them - Boardman's house brand. It came with a lovely 3-pin plug attached. What a joy.