Hook up & Hairdryers

graham finn · Jul 17, 2016

I am a little confused with the electricity in the van as I'm not sure what the difference in wattage is between home and hook up. In an earlier thread I saw 230v in the van so what is my house? And how come when I use my travel Hairdryer in the van once hooked up it tripped the electric. I now have 3 Hairdryers! 1 12v that is absolutely useless, 1 travel Hairdryer that up is European and when I turned the wattage down it was like a rocket launcher for 2 seconds then stopped working and the last is a U.K travel hairdryer again with the option of changing the voltage. I gave up recently in France with frustration. I really want to understand the whole voltage thing so I can just dry my hair and not get stressed in the process oh and not trip the electricity.

Loz · Jul 17, 2016

The voltage is the same so don't worry about that it's the available amperage that varies between home and sites.

At home you plug your hair drier into a circuit that us most likely protected by a 32A breaker on a hook up you only have 10 normally so you need to do a simple sum to work out what your hair dries draws.

If it is a 1000w 240v dairy drier it draws 1000/240 = 4.1 amps so a 2000w drier will double that to 8.2 Amps, add to that a couple of amps for your onboard charger and pop goes the 10A breaker. If you are on a site with only a 6A hookup you would struggle with a 1000w hairdryer.

Can you not plug it into a socked in the toilet block?

graham finn · Jul 17, 2016

Wow ! I think I will take your advise and use the shower blocks for my hairdryer. Thank you so much.

GrannyJen · Jul 17, 2016

Mine is 2000W so to take that, 10 amps at least needs to be supplied by the bollard that you plug into.

In the UK most are 16A so plenty to run my Hairdryer. France is often 10A (pay fractionally more for it) so will be marginal to say the least, some are 6A and pierre will not be throwing many gallic shrugs your way if you plug a 2000 watt hairdryer into that plunging at least part of the site into darkness.