Electricity - Part 1

The first thing that you realize when you are planning a move out of North America is that both the electrical and tv broadcast systems in North America are different than SA (and much of the rest of the world for that matter)  SA works on 220V 50 Hz and PAL TV.   Knowing this we started with a sorting process.

This sorting process took several passes.  The first pass was done with a very general question in mind.  Will we need this in SA?  Things like power tools we pretty much decided we wouldn't need.  We were going to be renting, so housing modifications were going to be minimal and we figured that we'd rather be spending time exploring anyway.  Things like the table saw, router and circular saw were definitely store or give away items. 

When it came to things like lamps, clock radios and kitchen appliances we divided into need or not.

The next pass we checked through all of those electronics we thought we would need and looked to see if they were compatible with a 220 current.  Things like the laptop, printer and ipod chargers were fine.   But the Nintendo DS chargers were not (though a South African charger works without a transformer as the wattage output is the same).  So that narrowed things even further. 

In order to keep things straight in my head I went to the dollar store and got some green, blue, red and yellow stickers.  Green (Go to SA by sea container), blue (Go to SA by air), yellow (Caution hold in storage in Canada), Red (Stop freecycle , garbage or someone in the family was going to take it).  I ended up using the stickers for all of the furniture and boxes as well, it really helped me and the movers when it came time to actually move stuff.

My brother had moved to Switzerland from the US several years ago and we had the opportunity to visit him twice over the years. I knew one thing that I needed to bring from home for sure, was my clothes dryer.  The clothes dryers in Switzerland didn't dry anything like they did in Canada.  Everything had to be hung to finish drying.  Part of the issue is that they are condensing dryers not direct vent dryers so the humid air is recycled leaving the clothes damp.  After our look see visit in February it was confirmed that clothes dryers in SA were the same.  The good thing about  Canadian clothes driers is that they are 220V, the bad thing was we didn't clue into this until we had already agreed to sell our current dryer with the house, so we needed to get another one.  Now that I'm here I wish we had managed a 220V Canadian sized washing machine too.  The washer here is tiny and for a family of 5 a big Canadian one would have made my laundry go a lot quicker.

The other thing that we needed to get was a PAL TV.   Dh did some research online and found a store in North Toronto that specialized in 220V appliances.

M, one of the staff, was amazing, but what he told us conflicted with what we had heard from my brother about his relocation.  

One said told us that lamps would work just fine with a plug adaptor and a 220V bulb.  The other said nope.

One said that kitchen appliances would be fine, though mix masters and coffee grinders would be a little slower due to the lower Hz. We just needed a transformer.  The other said not to take anything with a heating element.

They both said that with an appropriately sized transformer we could run our North American stereo, TV, Wii system and DVD player.  We wouldn't be able to watch DVD's that we purchased in SA or play Wii games, but we could watch and play all the ones that we currently owned. 

Given that the company was moving us we decided to push our luck and take some things that we had conflicting opinions about.  We reasoned that if they worked, great we saved ourselves a bunch of money,  if they didn't they weren't so huge that they couldn't be stored in the garage until we moved back home.  We also figured that it would be better to use what we have rather than buying new there and having to sell them or get rid of them when we moved back home.

Turns out moving our things was the right decision. Using the transformer, my sewing machine works just fine, I don't even notice the speed is different.  The toaster toasts, the coffee grinder grinds, just a little slower than it used to.  All the lamps, but one work, though the tri-lights are only single lights now.  The only thing that I really notice the difference in is my stand mixer.  It's a basic Sunbeam and I've noticed that it doesn't really have the same speed variation as it did in Canada, but it's still workable.  The TV, Wii, DVD combo, through the transformer, also works like a charm.  How we could have forgotten a North American power bar however, is beyond me.  So, we need to plug and unplug things every once and a while, but no biggie.

One thing I was thrilled about was my iPhone.  We knew that dh was going to get a cell phone through work, but we also knew that my Canadian cell phone wouldn't work in SA.  Knowing that it would take longer to get a home phone than a cell phone I bought an unlocked iPhone and am so thankful for that.  It was up and running within a day of our arrival and it is still very much needed as phones in SA are not a flat rate like in Canada.  You pay for the phone line and you pay for every local and long distance call that is made.  Calls in are free, calls out cost money.  It's actually cheaper for me to make calls on the cell phone, so it's been very important.  Because it's unlocked I can pick up a local card anywhere we travel outside of SA and use it when we return to Canada with any provider without roaming charges.

Seeing as I now had an iPhone before we left Canada I loaded up on TV shows and movies for the kids on iTunes.  We got a set of component cables so we could watch on the Canadian TV.  One day I was having a mommy moment and I plugged the iPhone into our PAL TV.  A few days later it occurred to me that it was still hooked up to the PAL TV, but it had been working just fine.  How cool is that.  It must have something to do with the fact that it is a digital not an analog signature.  It has occurred to me that maybe the digital satellite feed would have worked on our TV from Canada too.  No sense trying it now really, as we bought a PAL TV, but maybe we could have saved some money and just used the TV from home.  Maybe NTSC and PAL don't matter in a digital world. That's something that would have been nice to know before we left.

So, what I learned is that if you have the right transformer, which weighs an absolute ton by the way, you can run just about anything you have in Canada.  By having 2 transformers we have really saved ourselves not only a ton of money purchasing replacements for all the things we already owned, but saved ourselves the hassle of trying to resell them all before we leave for home again.  If we have purchased something here that we want to take back to Canada the transformers work in reverse too.  So the transformers are a win win as far as I'm concerned.

Next post - Electricity  - Part 2 - What the?