7 Million Baht New House & Not Earthed / Grounded...

[GungaDin]

I've just returned from a rental inspection, new house but no earthing.

Amazing!

How much to add the Earth wire to 20 sockets?

Replace all or some sockets with double Panasonics.

Any guesses?

Thanks

[Beardog]

Gungadin,

Did they put an actual grounding rod in and have an earth bar connected in the consumer panel?

Or is it the usual 2 pin installation without ground wire in the receptacle. This will give the resident sparkies a clue to give you an answer. I only know the price is going to vary from city to city. I already gave free reign to My contractor on the first project & on the real house I will be nicely be up in his work to make sure the work is carried out as expected. It still wont guaranty that it is done right but I already have a top gun electrician & have done all the plumbing & will be sighting the property with the help of my nearest neighbor(with the transit). this should get your post bumped as Crossy- Elkangorito -Trojers & the other heavy hitters in this dept will most likely have the answers.

Barry

[GungaDin]

Gungadin,

Did they put an actual grounding rod in and have an earth bar connected in the consumer panel?

Nope

Or is it the usual 2 pin installation without ground wire in the receptacle.

Yes

This will give the resident sparkies a clue to give you an answer.

I only know the price is going to vary from city to city. I already gave free reign to My contractor on the first project & on the real house I will be nicely be up in his work to make sure the work is carried out as expected. It still wont guaranty that it is done right but I already have a top gun electrician & have done all the plumbing & will be sighting the property with the help of my nearest neighbor(with the transit). this should get your post bumped as Crossy- Elkangorito -Trojers & the other heavy hitters in this dept will most likely have the answers.

Barry

Hard to find a cleaner out here let alone a Sparkie.

I did have a good guy for installations but he had a car accident & vanished.

He charged 400bt per double Panasonic installed, which I thought was fair.

I just cannot understand why someone would skimp on something so basic.

If I rent the place, Ill have to pay for adding the Earthing and cables as I did in my current rental.

Thanks for responding.

johnno

[longball53098]

I guess you have a choice to not rent the place.

400 to 500 per duplex socket would be about right depending if the wall boxes have a conduit he can pull the green wire into.

The 2.5 meter ground rod and cable and install is another cost and I have no feel for this cost but I would guess a thousand or so might do it plus the cable cost. Cable needs to be as big as the main supply cable.

Edited January 23, 2010 by longball53098

[gotlost]

I cant believe they had 20 outlets in the house. Usually about 10 outlets by Thai standards.

[bdenner]

<deleted>, the OP trying to say that they let a builder complete plans and build an "Opulant" home without earthing! Do you people know that 2C +E (2.5mm x 1.0mm) TPS cable is readily available in Thailand at about USD $75.00 per 100 meter (I used it in the building my home some 8 years ago and ALL my GPO's are Earthed whether I use double insulated appliences or not). 3 x 2 meter copper coated rods bonded together near an external water source gives good Earthing (Mine are buried near the septic system). The thing is one has to disregard pressures from TW and the bullshit advice she is given by her "Brother"!

[Beardog]

Johnno I thought I had a real cowboy do the first house. No earth bar or grounding rod ?Ouch it is common for them to skimp unless you are there to make sure they understand you are farang & want many outlets with grounds. A lot of the so called electricians were tile workers or cement mixers & don't know much about how to safely install electrics. our clown used the temporary knife switch as the power to the consumer box. It burned up 7 months later. The earth bar was in place & I did put in the grounding rod myself but he used the 2 prong instead of the agreed 3 prong for grounding. The outfit went bankrupt & we got to do most of the pick up finish work & 1/2 of the painting. It sounds like it shouldn't be to difficult to fix accept getting the other wire fished through for the ground(if the did use conduit & not Spackle over the lines like 1/3 of our house was done.Glad they made all the errors on the small house so I know what to look for. Hopefully I don't get a new can of unforeseen worms on the next round. Building in LOS is a real trip!!!!!!!!

[GungaDin]

BD ^^^

Conduit. 55555 No way, tacked straight on the wall as in my present house, easy to work & install but crude.

Owner doesn't seem to want to negotiate over the rent & I don't want to spend more cash on A/Cs and redoing the Grounding etc....

My interest in the house was;

A. it is only 300metres from where I am now

B. It has a huge concrete garden which would be ideal for my portable container garden. (80 containers)

C. It's never been lived in.

I think I'l have to pass on it.

bdenner is correct.

Thanks to all who responded.

[longball53098]

A 7 million baht house with cables tacked on the walls?

Where did they spend all the money?

Or is it 6 million for the land and 1 mil for the house?

[GungaDin]

^^^ The parquet floor & staircase.

The kitchen had the largest ehaust fan I've ever seen. Looked "industrial".

[harrry]

I hope those containers do not have green tomato looking plants growing out of them with big lights coming from the 20 double outlets.

[GungaDin]

G'day Harold

I'm currently running 3 powerstips of 5 sockets each upstairs.and 2 powerstrips downstairs.

The kitchen has 3 double sockets for fridge, toaster, kettle, rice cooker & washing machine, all earthed...

This post cannot be edited for spilling mistakes as there is a fault currently in FF 3.6

[ignis]

I'm sure you looked ?

Had my house built in 2004 but only 2 million, never gave a thought to earth wire but did get the builders to install a Safe-T-Cut unit..

Moved in plugged in Pc and go shocks from the case, did some checking myself, yes there was earth in every plug socket, yes the earth was connected to the consumer panel, then counted there was 1x earth cable connected to every socket to the consumer panel, there should have been an extra 1 from grounding rod to consumer panel.

Did it myself as an easy job, no more shocks.... Just thought maybe your house is the same?

[GungaDin]

Thanks Ignis.

I'll get my pommie sparks to check that, next time he visits me, what a pity he can't be seen to be working.

Someone local would be sure to see him, at least he can inspect & report.

[H2oDunc]

I look after a 50 million baht house here on Samui. You would not believe the state of the electrics. The owner has spent an absolute fortune on them.It was built by one of the biggest so called European standard builders / developers now bust, Fancy that ! We have recently had a surge protector put in as it was costing a fortune in replacement bulbs. The guy that fitted it said upon opening the fuse box / power box. " Geez, you've got 10 pounds of sH#t in a 5 pound bag " there are several appliances wired into each breaker and wires just taped together. You would expect a little better from a 50 mill house.

I have said for a while now there is a big market for a European standard project manager to oversee the build quality of a house construction especially if the buyer / owner is not in the country.

[david96]

Earthing is not mandatory in Thailand. Any earthing is direct, ie, the equipment to be earthed has a conductor run to an individual electrode in the ground. Earthing is very basic.

RCDs are also not mandatory.

Do not compare Thai electrical standards with those of developed Western countries.

One will find the absence of an effective earthing system is common and in most cases and an earthing system if installed is not correctly implemented.

The average Thai electrical installation is single phase 220V with no earthing and no RCDs and two pin socket outlets are common, the earth pin of a three pin socket outlet is not always earthed.

Often RCDs may be installed in lieu of an earthing system. This complies with Thai requirements.

( Earthing and/or the use of RCDs minimises the risk of injury or death from electric shock ).

[Crossy]

The 'cheap' option (as this is a renter) would be to identify the points that actually need a ground (aircon, those for your PC, freezer, water heater etc) and fit grounded 3-pin outlets only to those, possibly with individual ground rods (not something I really like doing, but beggars can't be choosers).

Tacking a single ground wire alongside the existing surface wiring wouldn't look too bad or you could hide it in some of that tiny mini-trunking.

Easier if they're on outside walls, just drill straight through the wall behind the outlet and drop down the outside wall to a ground stake.

If you take this route you'll need an RCD as the ground current won't be enough to take out an MCB in the event of a L-E fault.

IIRC all NEW Thai installations are supposed to be grounded and RCD'd, even the drawings on my website which are at least 5 years old show grounded MEN systems with a 30mA RCD, one wonders how this new build got past inspection (actually one doesn't really need to wonder).

[david96]

Installing RCDs/RCBOs on all final sub circuits will give protection against earth faults as they will automatically disconnect the circuit in less than 0.3secs.(AS3000)

They will protect an person from injury or death as a result of indirect contact and will also under certain circumstances give protection from direct contact with an exposed terminal or conductor.

Protection is also provided if the PE conductor in an extension lead or appliance cord fails.

It should be pointed out that if you install earthed socket outlets all electrical equipment with the exception of double insulated or SELV equipment must be earthed with a 2 core and earth flexible cord with an approved 3 pin plug top connected in an approved manner. Two core extension leads should not be used. If you do not do this you will be wasting you time and money as your earthing will not be effective. Permanently connected equipment must also be earthed.

If you do not want to go for the earthing route 10ma or 30ma RCD/RCBOs will give you the required protection level.

All new electrical instalations should have an approved earthing system that complies with a recognised standard and RCD protection. But to enforce that one may have to write it into the job specifications. The same with mandatory testing before connection to supply.

One has yet to see a legal document (translated) which states that RCDs are mandatory and the earthing requirements, eg TT or TN-C-S (MEN) in Thailand. One can not be sure if the supply network neutral is effectively earthed. Thailand does not have the equivilent of the UK IEEE rules or AS /NZ3000.

One cannot prevent electric shock but one can minimise the risk of injury or death as a result of electric shock.

[seedy]

Tacking a single ground wire alongside the existing surface wiring wouldn't look too bad or you could hide it in some of that tiny mini-trunking.

Easier if they're on outside walls, just drill straight through the wall behind the outlet and drop down the outside wall to a ground stake.

Great idea !!! I was wondering about how to do this myself, and these will solve the problem. Just have to put on a mask and work at night !!!

[palm]

I cant believe they had 20 outlets in the house. Usually about 10 outlets by Thai standards.

From what I've seen, 20 sockets would mean a 20 room house.

[12DrinkMore]

I have said for a while now there is a big market for a European standard project manager to oversee the build quality of a house construction especially if the buyer / owner is not in the country.

Sure, but the buyers/owners only want to pay Thai wages for a job that provides endless frustration and demands constant onsite presence....

:D

You get what you pay for.

[bankruatsteve]

Uhmm - you can easily ground your service entrance and you can easily change sockets to 3 prong (grounded) - BUT, if you don't have the ground WIRE (ie: white, black, and copper ground) in all your wiring, you are doing nothing.

[GungaDin]

Note: 20 sockets = 10 duplex, not so many.

I'm still looking for another large house, with a concrete garden, to rent.

Any area considered.

Thanks for all the helpful replies, above.