The Importance Of Earth Wires

[Crazy Dave]

LATEST NEWS

Saturday 19th February 2005

Woman dies as she suffers an electric shock in the shower.

  Police Lieutenant Colonel Tidipong from Pattaya Police Station was called to the Maggie May Bar on Soi Chayapoon to investigate the death of a young woman in one of the 1st floor rooms. In room number 383/21 the body of Khun Pranne aged 25 who works inside the bar was discovered inside the bathroom. She had sustained serious burns to her neck suggesting that she may have passed away due to an electrical problem with the shower unit. Police spoke with the bars cashier, Khun Rachadar aged 34 who confirmed that the shower unit was brand new and after an initial inspection the unit appeared not to have an earthing cable. The combination of the water and the lack of earth on the unit is believed to have caused a power surge leading to the young woman’s death. Inside the room Police discovered a UK Driving License belonging to Mr. Anthony James McNally aged 49 from Wallasey in England, and there were pictures of him inside the room suggesting they are together. However he has not yet been located by Police. A forensic doctor at the scene confirmed that death was caused by an electric shock.

the linky thing

[toastwars]

mine is not atached to anything apart from a water pipe, I dream of hot showers, golden ones usually but I am not fussy

[ovenman]

mine is not atached to anything apart from a water pipe

Do you actually have any metal water pipes to attach a grounding wire?

[Thetyim]

I think Toasty was joking there.

He has a cold water shower

[toastwars]

mine is not atached to anything apart from a water pipe

Do you actually have any metal water pipes to attach a grounding wire?

I meant it is not an electric shower it is basicly a tube with a showerhead that water comes out of, it gets me clean and keeps me cool but thats about it. We have had a big earthing debate due to a live computer before, I am pretty sure that my building is not earthed(only two pin sockets) and I have not found ang grounding clamps on any pipes. I avod High gain appliances and don't really want a hot shower anyway

[ovenman]

I think Toasty was joking there.

He has a cold water shower

The OvenMan is a little slow on the uptake today.

I've actually seen people attach ground wires to plastic water piping in Thailand so nothing really surprises me...

[Crazy Dave]

i really think attaching earth wires to metal water pipes is against the law in most countries and is probably not a good idea as you stand a chance of livening up all your metal water pipes.

yes metal pipes are used in this country for hot water systems in bathrooms...

[toastwars]

i really think attaching earth wires to metal water pipes is against the law in most countries and is probably not a good idea as you stand a chance of livening up all your metal water pipes.

yes metal pipes are used in this country for hot water systems in bathrooms...

I am asuming you are not a plumber/electrician Dave, Please do not do any DIY work you will end up killing someone, and try to give advice that is correct. All you lot please don't go detaching any earth strips on Crazy(not a plumber or an electrician)Daves advice

Edited February 20, 2005 by toastwars

[Crazy Dave]

i really think attaching earth wires to metal water pipes is against the law in most countries and is probably not a good idea as you stand a chance of livening up all your metal water pipes.

yes metal pipes are used in this country for hot water systems in bathrooms...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am asuming you are not a plumber/electrician Dave, Please do not do any DIY work you will end up killing someone, and try to give advice that is correct. All you lot please don't go detaching any earth strips on Crazy(not a plumber or an electrician)Daves advice

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i think your english language skills are lacking some what toasty, several posters mentioned using the metal water pipes to use an earth,also the young lady was killed by an unearthed shower unit, now if you have an electric shower unit and then connected the earth wire to the metal pipes if there was a problem then the whole lot would be live, the earthing point is on the shower heater where the electric goes, this you would run a wire into an earthing rod, not your water pipes.

pls try to keep up toasty...

[toastwars]

i really think attaching earth wires to metal water pipes is against the law in most countries and is probably not a good idea as you stand a chance of livening up all your metal water pipes.

yes metal pipes are used in this country for hot water systems in bathrooms...

I am asuming you are not a plumber/electrician Dave, Please do not do any DIY work you will end up killing someone, and try to give advice that is correct. All you lot please don't go detaching any earth strips on Crazy(not a plumber or an electrician)Daves advice

i think your english language skills are lacking some what toasty, several posters mentioned using the metal water pipes to use an earth,also the young lady was killed by an unearthed shower unit, now if you have an electric shower unit and then connected the earth wire to the metal pipes if there was a problem then the whole lot would be live, the earthing point is on the shower heater where the electric goes, this you would run a wire into an earthing rod, not your water pipes.

pls try to keep up toasty...

Allow me to enlighten you on the finer points of electrical safety.

Electricity will ground on the path of least resistance i.e straight down the metal pipes that it is earthed to.

therefore a unearthed shower unit is dangerous an earthed one is not, this is why we earth thing to metal pipes, It is a safty precaution, you will know that you have a fault in the system because your sink and pipes will have current in them and you will feel it: But because it is earthed and your body is more resistant than metal pipes you will not be killed, this system is practiced all over the world and as a kitchen fitter this what I do so go back to whatever it is you do and stop giving out dangerous advice on subjects you know nothing about. Please. Someone may listen to you and die so I would just like to make this point very clkear, DO NOT REMOVE ANY EARTH CLAMPS IN YOUR PROPERTY ON THE ADVCE OF Crazy(not an electrican)Dave

Thankyou

[Crazy Dave]

toasty, in what country in the world do they advocate earthing electrical consumer units to water pipes?

electrical consumer units need to be earthed using a earthing rod that is buried outside of your building.

earthing your sink and water pipes is a seperate issue.

[toastwars]

toasty, in what country in the world do they advocate earthing electrical consumer units to water pipes?

electrical consumer units need to be earthed using a earthing rod that is buried outside of your building.

earthing your sink and water pipes is a seperate issue.

[/

yes that is true but you were giviny the impression that having earth stips on pipes was dargerous, I was merely clarifying, and an earth clamp on copper piping is the practice in the UK The piping in turn is connected to a copper strip buried outside the house but this is not always visible. In Thailand with many building not having any earth this presents a different problem. All I was making sure was that no one would remove any earth clamps and put themselves in danger. Is that ok?

[Crazy Dave]

toasty, as this is a thai forum we are not really discussing uk earthing, i believe it was about 15 years ago in the uk when it became normal practise to earth sinks, due i believe to some woman dropping an electrical appliance in the sink and killing herself.

as this topic stated in the title, its about unearthed shower units, now most buildings here use plastic pipes, but some have the whole bathroom set up from one heater unit, now the feed to the unit would be a plastic cold water pipe, from that the hot water would be run in copper or lead pipes, now in this scenario where would the least path of resistance be if the earth from the heater was attached to the pipe? i shall not be trying that one myself.

now i stated;

i really think attaching earth wires to metal water pipes is against the law in most countries and is probably not a good idea as you stand a chance of livening up all your metal water pipes.

this again is in relation to this topic of thailand and hot water heaters, not the uk and fitting kitchens, there are no pipes in thailand with earths on them in 99.999999 percent of houses, if the earth something here they will earth the appliance.

anyway thanks for your wild hysterical screaming and wild accusations due to your misunderstanding or not actually bothering to read a thread properly, anyway you might like my blog if you want to learn more about thailand building

its a bit of a mess at the moment but has some nice pics

http://thaibuilding.blogspot.com/

http://thaibuilding1.blogspot.com/

[toastwars]

toasty, as this is a thai forum we are not really discussing uk earthing, i believe it was about 15 years ago in the uk when it became normal practise to earth sinks, due i believe to some woman dropping an electrical appliance in the sink and killing herself.

as this topic stated in the title, its about unearthed shower units, now most buildings here use plastic pipes, but some have the whole bathroom set up from one heater unit, now the feed to the unit would be a plastic cold water pipe, from that the hot water would be run in copper or lead pipes, now in this scenario where would the least path of resistance be if the earth from the heater was attached to the pipe? i shall not be trying that one myself.

now i stated;

i really think attaching earth wires to metal water pipes is against the law in most countries and is probably not a good idea as you stand a chance of livening up all your metal water pipes.

this again is in relation to this topic of thailand and hot water heaters, not the uk and fitting kitchens, there are no pipes in thailand with earths on them in 99.999999 percent of houses, if the earth something here they will earth the appliance.

anyway thanks for your wild hysterical screaming and wild accusations due to your misunderstanding or not actually bothering to read a thread properly, anyway you might like my blog if you want to learn more about thailand building

its a bit of a mess at the moment but has some nice pics

http://thaibuilding.blogspot.com/

http://thaibuilding1.blogspot.com/

you may know about jerry building in thailand but earthing to pipes is not illigal and as I said I was merely trying to prevent any accidents, you enjoy your building project but don't touch anything electrical when you have wet hands, and remember to turn the gas off if you can smell it

cheers

[Crazy Dave]

hmmm, "JERRY BUILDING". thats actually quite offensive to a guy that has been paid to fly to other countries to sort out building projects, and i might add quite a few offers to have paid flights back to the uk for small 2 month projects, of which i obviously turned down, well it always seems to be winter when i get the offers, i might add that the main house in the blog has been valued at 22 million baht, then again with 9 bathrooms it is quite a big house..

[Doctor John]

, and remember to turn the gas off if you can smell it

cheers

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

When I used to live in Hastings I used to turn my gas meter round so it ran in reverse, to make sure the gas was not leaking I would light a match and run it around the joint.

True story.

[Crazy Dave]

, and remember to turn the gas off if you can smell it

cheers

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

When I used to live in Hastings I used to turn my gas meter round so it ran in reverse, to make sure the gas was not leaking I would light a match and run it around the joint.

True story.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

believe it or not i actually believe that, i remember when i first started working and it was fitting a kitchen, so then my boss goes "right im gonna check for gas leaks", i asked "wot sort of machine do you use to check"?

he got out his lighter and i run away yep he used to use his lighter to check for gas leaks.

[Thetyim]

My house has metal water pipes and they are used as earth for appliances.

Am I the 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 percent ?

[Crazy Dave]

My house has metal water pipes and they are used as earth for appliances.

Am I the 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 percent  ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

okay i shall bite

how deep into the dirt are your metal water pipes?

are they copper or lead? as copper is a better conductor of electric.

you obviously realise that the main water feed to your building is in plastic pipe i take it ?

i believe the shortest earthing rod you can buy in thailand is 120cms and is obviously copper.

[Thetyim]

My water pipes are galvanized steel.

The main supply uses the same stuff.

Don't know how deep it goes but they dissappear under the concrete and I am not going to dig them up for you and Toasty.

By the way if you really want to wind Toasty up ask him if he got his nickname after touching a pipe at home

[Crazy Dave]

thetyim, believe me, i doubt very much that your mains supply is in metal, ie the other side of your meter,ie on the road, and the stuff leading up to ur house will at most be likely to be 30cms underground, but anyway it really isnt good practise to use water pipes as an earthing rod for electrical appliances, although i should imagine that it would work, it really isnt done in practise, then again its better than no earth at all as the young lady who was the reason to start this thread found out..

[tuky]

and of course, install a safe t cut or similar device...

[Crazy Dave]

actually tuky, those safe t cut boxes are not really that good, well not for a farang house in thailand, actually lets get this straight b4 im attacked yet again, the safe t cuts are good but are not suitable for farangs houses the way they are set up, the most safety cut units i have seen in one building is one per building, now these have many differant current draw settings, generally with most farang houses they will have half a dozen aircons, now each aircon when the compressor kicks will draw from 10 amps upwards, if all 6 kick in at the same time that will be 60 amps, so straight away you need a really high setting for that safe t cut, that really defeats the object of a safe t cut having the setting so high, in a perfect world you would have differant safety cuts for differant areas of your house, but alas i have never seen that here

also even an old 12,000btu aircon unit can draw upto 16 amps as the compressor kicks in, lets say you have 6 of them, the smallest usable aircons available, yep that safety cut then gets turned off and is never used again

[tuky]

Dave, I think you might be thinking about a circuit breaker rather than a residual current device like a safetycut. My Safetcut has a setting of 5-20 milliamps differential between active and neutral, what you have described sounds more like a fuse??? am I on the wrong track here?

[lopburi3]

actually tuky, those safe t cut boxes are not really that good, well not for a farang house in thailand, actually lets get this straight b4 im attacked yet again, the safe t cuts are good but are not suitable for farangs houses the way they are set up, the most safety cut units i have seen in one building is one per building, now these have many differant current draw settings, generally with most farang houses they will have half a dozen aircons, now each aircon when the compressor kicks will draw from 10 amps upwards, if all 6 kick in at the same time that will be 60 amps, so straight away you need a really high setting for that safe t cut, that really defeats the object of a safe t cut having the setting so high, in a perfect world you would have differant safety cuts for differant areas of your house, but alas i have never seen that here

also even an old 12,000btu aircon unit can draw upto 16 amps as the compressor kicks in, lets say you have 6 of them, the smallest usable aircons available, yep that safety cut then gets turned off and is never used again

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Again believe you have good intentions but have used the wrong words. Unless you have leakage the amount of current used (without leakage) has no effect on an ELCB as long as the total is below the max trip rating of the built in breaker. Safe-T-Cut new models seem to be 63 amps. You do not adjust this.

The trip from an ELCB is milliamps (30 or less for safety) and as long as your equipment is not leaking (good compressors) that should not be a problem. Now if you have substandard compressors you will have a problem - but that is also likely to happen with multi ECLB also.

The big advantage of using multi ECLB is trouble shooting. And of course if you turn it off rather that fix the problem it is not going to help you - but that would be the same if you had multi ECLB.

[Crazy Dave]

you will find that most aircons over 5 years old will trip a safety cut, this is due to the amount of ampage they need to kick start the compressor, when you first turn on an aircon the fan unit starts, after a few seconds the compressor will kick in, the safety cut assumes there is a short and trips, the safety cut not the breaker box or fuse box, an old 12,000btu aircon may need as much as 16 amps to start it up, once it has got going it will settle at 5 to 8 amps draw, its the sudden draw that trips the safety, it assumes due to the sudden increase in current that there is a short.

63 amps is not really enough for the average farang house, please note my previous post was about normal farang houses here in thailand where we have aircon and hot water and that sort of thing, not a two bedroomed thai bungalow, the average farang house in pattaya or jomtien is 3 to 4 bedrooms with the same amount of bathrooms, if they were all used at the same time thats a lot of electric.

there are many models of safe t cut available, and as i stated before, 1 is not enough for the average farang house.

i have even found old fridges that have triggered safe t cuts, they had no problems with shorts or anything, its just when the compressor kicked in the current draw was so much that the safe t cut assumed it was a short...you will find that compressors will confuse the safe t cut.

[lopburi3]

I do have a six bedroom house and have used a Saft-T-Cut for 27 years so I do not believe I am going to wake up tomorrow and find out it can't be done.

Use ELCB protection; please.

[Crazy Dave]

ok lets repost some of my post that some of you dont seem to be able to read

the safe t cuts are good but are not suitable for farangs houses the way they are set up

note the bit about the way they are set up...this is the most important bit... a safety device is absolutely useless if it isnt the right one for the job or badly set up.

in a perfect world you would have differant safety cuts for differant areas of your house, but alas i have never seen that here

as you can see i am advocating the use of safety cuts but, and thats a large BUT, properly set up with several of them for the normal farang type house here, ie a 3 bedroomed 3 bathroomed place with say 3 safe t cuts in, ie 1 for bathrooms, 1 for lighting and sockets and 1 for aircons. that would be the proper way to make a normal farang home electrically safe, if you look in my blog at the kitchen pics, that kitchen draws more than 63 amps and thats not including the cold room and the kitchen aircon.

[Thetyim]

thetyim, believe me, i doubt very much that your mains supply is in metal, ie the other side of your meter,ie on the road, and the stuff leading up to ur house will at most be likely to be 30cms underground, but anyway it really isnt good practise to use water pipes as an earthing rod for electrical appliances, although i should imagine that it would work, it really isnt done in practise, then again its better than no earth at all as the young lady who was the reason to start this thread found out..

Believe me Dave, the mains supply under the road is in metal, I have seen it with my own eyes .

I know it is not perfect but better than no earth at all.

Tell me, would I be better of using the telephone copper earth rod, that is just outside the front door ?

[Crazy Dave]

thetyim. yep the telephone earth will be 150cms deep and away from your water, but it does mean re running all your earth cables, its actually reasonably safe to carry on using your water pipe as an earth in the thai context, its just not really the done thing, its like using an angle grinder is reasonably safe to use without the guard on but it just isnt the done thing. actually this is where i shall get hammered again, relative safety in thailand, now in america or the uk, every single food stall that we have here would be closed, due to hygene etc, yet we all eat at them sometimes, are they safe? will the food be fresh? so yes there is a lot lower standard of safety here than the uk, in the uk i never even thought about taking the safety guard off of an angle grinder, now i doubt if i could use an angle grinder with a safety guard on, so its all pretty relative to where we live.