What colour is earth ?

[laislica]

23 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

Safe-t-cut (RCCD) works if there is a difference between L and N currents.  It can save your life but will not prevent a painful shock if you become an electric ground point.  A dedicated ground would trip breaker before you touched it (hot chassis) in most cases and offers greater protection and safety.  Highly recommend using both systems but if no ground make sure you do have RCCD.

 

Indeed, The Safe-T-Cut installation diagram clearly shows that a good ground (earth) connection is required, presumably for the reasons stated by lopbury.

 

23 hours ago, paulbj2 said:

In summary, your expert may well have been perfectly right. He was probably implementing a PME installation which is bang up to date whereas earth spikes are a bit "early 20th century"

 

[laislica]

48 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

That has not been my experience during the 40 plus years I have in Thailand - experienced many more real outages while in USA than in Bangkok - but agree switching is more often dirty and power lost for few seconds here so more obvious (especially with electric clocks).  Have not knowingly lost anything due to power surge (other than lightning strikes).  

 

Where you live may have a big bearing on what happens.

Brown outs in cities (worldwide I think) and power cuts/switching are usually without significant problems But!

Rural anywhere can be very problematic for spikes and surges.

 

I used to live in rural Spain and we were forced to switch off at the mains during thunderstorms to protect our domestic kit. We lost many phone charges, a laptop, various remote control switches, dimmers, a TV and God knows what else.

As did many of our neighbours.

I have lived in a large town or city since 2009 and although the brown outs/ switching/thunder storms still occur, not a problem (so far).

 

In Thailand we are in a gated moobaan with other moobaan's nearby, again, no problems, it is quite rural though.

 

 

[Farang99]

22 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

That has not been my experience during the 40 plus years I have in Thailand - experienced many more real outages while in USA than in Bangkok - but agree switching is more often dirty and power lost for few seconds here so more obvious (especially with electric clocks).  Have not knowingly lost anything due to power surge (other than lightning strikes).  

 

 

I have had to replace 2 relays in my water pump control box following power surges on return of power after a "natural" power cut (that is a cut due to lightning striking a main line fuse or whatever). Now I cut power to the pump as soon as there is a power cut, which is fine - as long as I am at home before the power returns and I can wait to see if everything is stable before starting the pump again.