The Appliance Dilemma

Posted on July 7, 2007
Filed Under Transportation, Expat Tips, Immigration | 18 Comments

As most of you may already know, we are planning to move to Uruguay in the next couple of years. For some time now, the subject of whether to ship our household goods or have a large bonfire keeps coming up between my wife and me. My wife was more inclined to the bonfire approach (donation, really), while I have been more partial to the prune and ship approach.

After months of debate, we are now both firmly in the camp of bringing the stuff with us. And we have Urufish to thank for it. He helped settled the issue once and for all, by writing about the trans-hemisphere moving process and the costs associated with it.

Once that issue was settled, a new discussion cropped up: whether to bring the electro-electronic equipment or not. As you may recall, I already discussed all the issues associated with the 220V voltage, 50 Hz frequency and the different plugs used in Uruguay in a previous post. And as I pointed out in that article, any high power equipment (500W and above) will require a bulky and ugly transformer, and some items may be unsafe to operate with a transformer unless properly grounded by an electrician.

In light of this, we thought it prudent to leave behind the 110V items that are either inconvenient or unsafe to use with a transformer and also the ones that are inexpensive to replace. Below are some sample items and our rationale.

Not safe to operate with transformer and inexpensive to replace:

Hair drier
Blender/Food processor
Microwave
Dishwasher
Washing machine
Refrigerator
Stereo

Television:

Uruguay uses a different standard than the US, so it doesn’t make sense to bring along.

DVD player:

Will need one with appropriate digital rights world region for Uruguay. But it may be a good idea to keep the old one to play Region 1 DVDs bought in the US.

Electric Stove/Oven:

Too expensive to operate in Uruguay. Gas is much cheaper there.

These items need a small transformer or auto-switch to 220, so we’ll take them:

VOIP modem
Wireless telephone set
Laptop computers
Camera charger
Electrical Shaver

Recently we discovered that a number of businesses in the US sell appliances that are compatible with foreign standards, such as the one used in Uruguay. Click here, here and here for a few examples. Since immigrants are allowed to bring household goods without paying taxes, it may be tempting to ship a few of the major appliances.

Click here for another take on this subject.

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18 Responses to “The Appliance Dilemma”

urufish on July 7th, 2007 10:44 pm

I don’t know what their prices are like but I’d recommend you open a dialogue with Uruvan. They have agents in all major US cities. They’re a one stop shop for the whole thing, loading the container, shipping, customs clearance and delivery to your door.

I’d like to give you my personal views on your list above…
Assuming you like what you have now, everything above that goes in your kitchen, (which in most apartments includes the washing machine) can easily and safely be used here by placing a U$S250 transformer under the counter, usually under the sink, and running some inexpensive 110v plugs up to the backsplashes. It’s neither time consuming, difficult nor expensive to retile a backsplash. You can do this with your bathrooms too.

American refrigerators work just fine here. 50hz presents no visible problems, even after 10 years.

Stereos (integrated 5.1 DVD systems) are cheap here. Most American DVD players are multi-region (both of mine were) and xformers are cheap. If you do buy one here, make sure you get multi-region if you plan to bring DVD’s from home. They’re all multi-region here except for the cheapest of the bunch.

Local TV’s are also inexpensive. The simplest converter from PAL to NTSC is not worth it unless you’ve got an expencive LCD or rear projection you dont want to part with (our dilemna).

Check with your local 220V store to see if they carry 220v xformers for your wireless telephone set. Plugging transformers into transformers is an ugly mess.

Last point. Having bought 220v appliances up North in a 220v store and having walked by local appliance stores hundreds of times in the past 18 months, my recommendation now would be to NOT buy back home–if you’re not terribly picky about style. Only the high end merchandise is cost-effective bringing from home. For instance, the fridge we boutht up North was U$S1500 less than it was here. But it was a high-end fridge. When we compare regular fridges here to the 220V stores up north, there’s no difference in price AND you get the warranty service here.

You should consider a dryer. Assuming you will have the facilities to hang out clothes, (which isn’t always the case), you still have 4 months of the year when it’s cold and damp and clothes take a long time to dry. Add to that the soot from all the gazoil furnaces in all those apartment buildings and you may not be happy with the result. For our apartment, we bought one of those space-saving, under/over Maytag units. Even though it was electric, when you cost drying for a family of 3, it wasn’t much.. 8 hours per week, at 0.15/hour isn’t anything to panic over.
juan del plata on July 8th, 2007 5:53 am

ive got a question: will a ntsc dvd player work with a pal tv? how can we know if our n american dvd player is multiregion? we have an expensive stereo - why would it be unsafe to use with a transformer? ditto with our washing machine - why is it unsafe to use with a transformer?
juan
Brazzie on July 8th, 2007 6:14 am

Thanks Urufish for the first hand experience account. Your info is really useful.

I do have some concern with using transformers with any appliance that is in the kitchen of near water. I grew up with that problem and received more mild shocks opening a 110V refrigerator with a transformer than I could possibly count, because it was not properly grounded. However I know that it is possible to have a safe 220 to 110V installation with grounded transformers, but it should to be done in a out of sight fashion as you pointed out. If properly done, you will actually be safer with a 110V “interface” than 220V.

Also, to my knowledge, GFCI type outlets won’t work with transformers, but please correct me if I am wrong. I almost died electrocuted once in Brazil due to a faulty electrical installation done by a “professional” electrician. As you can imagine, I no longer trust simple reassurances. I now need to understand everything.

Thanks for the recommendation of buying locally. That is our inclination. I would hate to spend money remodeling the kitchen because my new appliances won’t fit.

The tip on getting a dryer is also a good one. Thanks
Brazzie on July 8th, 2007 6:35 am

Juan,

The safety issue with transformers is related to grounding. Cheap transformers often found in South America do not have a fully grounded outlet. A safe installation CAN be made, but you have to make sure it is properly grounded.

The stereo, I considered in the category of cheap to replace (at least mine is). It would be safe to use with a transformer however.

I am not sure how you check the region of a DVD player. I know the one I bought here in the US does NOT play legit DVDs from Brazil. But will play pirate ones fine.
urufish on July 8th, 2007 8:19 am

Duhhhh… I made a booboo on the cost of drying… 0.15 is the KW charge. I think the under/over is 5kw.. so it’s 0.75/hour x 8 hours x 4 weeks. About U$S25/month to dry clothes. Of course, if you conserve and do one wash per week, it’s a lot less. A standard sized US dryer is 7kw (usually). The under/over is slightly smaller. The local dryers here are REAL SMALL. We bought one for U$S399. It draws 900w/1800w. My wife complains it takes 3 hours to dry 3 sheets
urufish on July 8th, 2007 8:40 am

Juan… the answer to your question is a qualified, time sensitive, yes. When I first came to Urugay I (ignorantly) brought a (super??)8 mmm camera with a movie we made at home. Plugged it into our friends TV and got a great move of diagonal interference. Why? TV’s in the 70’s and 80’s were PAL only. Sometime around the late 80’s early 90’s TV manufacturers started making PAL/NTSC televisions. I have not seen a TV in the past 10 years that is not PAL/NTSC. If you plug an NTSC DVD player, camera or (if you have children or are still childlike) a PS2/3 game, they will work just fine. The TV will autosense the NTSC and adjust for it.

Unfortunately for us (ex) North Americans, although we think we get the best stuff, truthfully, we get the crap. Our TV’s are not ‘globally’ empowered. You cant plug PAL equipment into our TV’s. They’re NTSC only.

One more thing you NEVER want to forget. There are different versions of PAL. You can research this on the internet. My 220v store happily told me the Panasonic 42″ LCD they sold me would work in Uruguay because it was a ‘world’ class PAL/NTSC TV. I’m a technical guy and it sounded good to me. Wrong. The TV was PAL, but the ‘flavour’ of this PAL worked in South Africa (not South America), Israel and methinks, Hong Kong. When I connected cable to it, the picture was clear, if you like B&W. PAL’s flavours are mostly colour specific. The 220v store, being a good company, sent me a US$300 Samsung ‘world’ video player for free to correct my problem. Once I cut the plug off (Hong Kong humongous), replaced it with a standard 3 pin UY style, connected cable to the Samsung, connected the Samsung to the TV, chose NTSC out, it works just fine. Just what I needed in 2007: a brand new VHS player!

Some resource documents should you feel like researching PAL/NTSC. Great colour picture of the world. Tells you if it’s PAL, NTSC or SECAM but it does NOT tell you what kind of PAL, which means it’s pretty - but also pretty useless…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PAL-NTSC-SECAM.svg

This is a good, detailed reference document which clearly states exactly what kind of PAL you need for each country in the world. Notice Uruguay uses PAL-N as does Argentina. Notice that Brazil uses PAL-M. Although M is adjacent to N in the alphabet (as Brazil is to Uruguay), that doesn’t mean they’re kissing cousins. Brazzie, if you want to cart your boob-tube back and forth, make sure you buy a TV that works with NTSC, PAL-N and PAL-M. Later today, I’ll look at the manuals that came with the two LCDs I bought here to see if Uruguay’s popular LCDs are PAL-M/N enabled.
http://www.sonadistributors.com/tvguide.asp
(PS. This is the store I bought my TV from that sold me a PAL-I TV (South Africa/Hong Kong). You’d think they’d read their own document eh?)
urufish on July 8th, 2007 8:49 am

Brazzie, you’re correct to be concerned about safety in a wet environment like the bathroom/kitchen. The xformer I quoted at US$250 is probably much less than that. I was thinking 3 phase… Closer to US$150 for what you’ll need in a kitchen (NOT for an electric dryer–if you buy the under/over, do it in a 220v store back home).

You buy the transformer at a place in Montevideo called Casa de Transformadores (tough one eh?). You buy it through an electrician who knows what he’s doing and you tell him you want it set up with ground fault protection.

I know what you’re talking about. My architect told me we needed to pay an extra US$100 on my installation to have it set up with ground fault protection. You may want the same kind of setup. The transformer in the kitchen connects to an under counter ac breaker panel which has ground fault protection. If anything were to short or ground out (like a person coming into contact with a live wire), it will trip out. If you go this route, ask them to use a higher value sensor. I posted this earlier. Both Mike and myself experienced very low ground fault conditions for no apparent reason which results in power going off for no reason, which is a bad thing if it happens several hours before you come home. Use the higher threshold unit and the problem goes away. It gives you a nastier shock should you stick your finger in a socket, but it wont cause you any damage.
urufish on July 8th, 2007 9:00 am

DVD players are supposed to have the regions they play marked on them. I never looked. If you’ve got a DVD player and you can bring it without financial penalty, might as well. DVD players here are dirt cheap. Check out those links I posted a while back.. www.motociclo.com.uy is a good place to start.
Brazzie on July 8th, 2007 9:01 am

I am old enough that I remember when Brazil went through the process of choosing the PAL-M color TV system in the early seventies.

Like Brazil, Argentina on purpose selected an incompatible system (PAL-N, since it was done a few years later) in order to protect to local manufacturers from cheaper imports. Since Uruguay did not have a local TV industry, it chose the same system as Argentina.

As you mentioned, the all PAL systems render black and white the same way, but differ in the way they encode color.

Nowadays, that the cost to add support for a different standard is small, the idea of having zillions of PAL color standards seems like a misguided idea.
Brazzie on July 8th, 2007 9:36 am

By the way, I just examined my DVD player carefully, reading every sticker and nowhere does it say it is region 1 (yet I know this is the case). I tried to find the manual without success. This information may be buried in the manual, but I would not bet on it.
? on July 8th, 2007 2:01 pm

i don’t understand. why don’t you just buy all your appliances when you get to uruguay?
urufish on July 8th, 2007 3:34 pm

Simple answer ?… $. What do I get for U$S10K worth of appliances? I lose at least half, if I’m lucky. More likely 60-70%. I have to buy them here. Sure, I can get inexpensive appliances. Not as nice. Not as well made.
Plus, some of those appliances we really liked.
In my case, by rigging up a 110v subsystem in the new house, I saved $ and kept a bunch of stuff that we really liked.

A few years ago, when we weren’t moving here, just buying a retirement apartment, we bought all of our appliances in a 220v store in toronto instead of buying them here.
I costed what we wanted, added in the price of the shipping (around U$S1500) and we came out ahead, with much better quality. Maytag and GE vs. Chung and Yung, (Candy and Panavox).
hugo on July 8th, 2007 9:22 pm

I am not sure but I remember reading somewhere that you must prove that you own all the items you are bringing into the country for at least a year to avoid paying duties. I might be wrong…
Brazzie on July 8th, 2007 9:32 pm

Hi Hugo, I hope another reader can confirm or deny your info.

Since an immigrant usually brings thousands of items, if true, the only way this rule could possibly work would be in an ad hoc fashion. That is, a receipt would be required only if the inspectors thought an item looked new.
Urufish on July 9th, 2007 7:51 pm

My broker told me to put anything like that,up in the nose of the container. This covered new TV’s, DVD players, clothes, and other household goods that were in original, unopened boxes. Best guess is he did that because there probably are rules against bringing in ‘new’ goods. Since the customs guys NEVER stay for the whole container, it’s something of a moot point.

If you obsess over things like this, and you have things that are totally new, remove them and use them a bit, or at least dirty them up a bit.
Reminds me of coming back from shopping in Buffalo. Remove all the tags, wear as much as you can while you’re there, scuff up the bottom of shoes, dirty up jewelery and for the more expensive stuff, wear it on your way through customs.

For liquor, borrow a friend’s RV. Bring empty, stamped bottles in the bar. Fill them up with US liquor, put them back in the bar and drive them back with you. Americans don’t dye liquor (like diesel fuel).
You’re no ‘PAL’ of mine « Learning Uruguay on July 10th, 2007 2:34 pm

[…] post owes itself to the comment section in Brazzie’s http://uruguaydreaming.com/2007/07/07/the-appliance-dilemma/ post today. I knew I had to write this when it got up to 12 comments and the day hasn’t […]
moustach on July 11th, 2007 10:40 am

I’m no engineer like Brazzie nor have the wealth of info like Urufish, but I do have a question. Why not change the fuse/breaker box to 110v. The only 220 needed in the house/apartment is an oven or dryer. The 110 is certainly safer for humans and appliances. Seems to me Edison and Steinmetz discussed this as well as AC/DC.

Here’s a question for all you in higher pay grades. Can conservation of resources occur if the 220v is parried to only a few plugs vs. all the plugs? I don’t know the answer just a question from a disturbed mind. This and getting cows to stop passing gas will save humanity

Later dudes, Moustach
Brazzie on July 11th, 2007 10:53 am

Moustach, good question.

It is certainly true that 110V is MUCH safer than 220V. However, the transmission and delivery costs are MUCH smaller with 220V. Studies have shown that the most economical and efficient method of delivery of AC to the homes is 220V 60HZ. Uruguay gets close, with 220V 50 HZ.

The savings also add up in the wiring. You need a lot less copper to deliver the same amount of power with 220V.

I think the US and Canada chose 110V for safety reasons, but they are rich enough and can afford the huge costs associated with it. 40V would be even safer, but nobody would be able to afford it or would be able to work with the thick wiring that would be required.

By the way, you cannot change the breaker box to 110V because the line coming in is ONLY 220V. So unless you add a humongous transformer in your front lawn, you are stuck with 220V (or with the alternative solution suggested by Urufish).

Cheers

The Appliance Dilemma

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