Hi. I'm a Yank in Dubai UAE -- a former UK colony. We use UK power here and have been through exactly what you've talked about.

First, power cords are easy to come by. Be careful when you first move to the UK to read all your labels and determine what is 110v v. what is 230v. I actually put red dots on the power supplies that were not dual voltage just to protect against blowing something up.

Second, you can buy powerstrips which have a universal outlet designed to take plugs from a variety of places. I have European two pin, UK, and US items plugged into the same outlet quite happily. Obviously, everything has to be dual voltage.


I'm not quite sure whether the universals are strictly kosher in terms of BSA standards. BSA is rather fussy. A UK electrical service has far less circuit breakers than in the US, but the electrical plugs on appliance are all fused. There are a lot of adapters coming in from China that have UK plugs on them, but which are not properly fused.

Moreover, the BSA standards really say that you shouldn't connect anything up to UK jacks on permanent basis which is not fused. Translation, go to boot sales or computer swap-n-shop's for the strips I'm talking about. You won't find them at Curry's.

For a good supplier of electrical items such as cords, etc., I like maplin.co.uk.

I've tried to keep step down transformers to a minimum, but you really can't get around them completely. I've replaced the little black transfomers we have with most appliances, but that meant buying a ton of universals transformers and some splicing of those transformers on to the original power cords. Is my approach better? I'm not sure. In Dubai, these universals are ridiculously cheap. In the UK, things will be more expensive.

Check the power supply on your desktop computer, but you should probably be ok. Make sure that the switch on the back is in the correct position. If your computer does not have a universal power supply, consider swapping the power supply.

A word of warning on appliances with motors. Even if you step down the voltage, the UK and US use different hertz (50 v. 60). For most appliances, this doesn't matter. If you are running something like a washing machine, you will prematurely burn out the motor running the unit for a long time at the wrong hertz. It is just a fact of life.

Also, unless you really love your landline phone, buy a new one in the UK. the impedance is different and in the UK the ringing circuitry is different. A US phone will work in the UK with a cheap adapter, but the fidelity will be off and it won't ring. You can work around this, but it is generally not worth it. NTL cable is the exception, their cable modems have a US RJ11 on the back and prefer US style telephones.

If you need any more help, please feel free to drop me a line.