I bought my house 11 months ago with no issues, after a few months everything metal in the kitchen starting giving me an electric shock when touched. After a few more months this stopped on its own, and has recently started again. We realised that it only happens when not wearing shoes, if that helps. Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Thankyou.
There is always a reason. Not always a good reason mind!
Some folks don't check the CPC integrity, and even if it is OK, checking the CPC potential to true Earth (as what is probably under the concrete floor) is not always done.
My only experience of that was a mate's father's home, said he got shocks from the garage door. Turned out no incoming supply earth to MET connection and recently an electric fire was added that the fixing screw managed to puncture the live. Result was whole house at 230V
No idea if it was just missing at the start, or some muppet had removed it for whatever reason.
Some folks don't check the CPC integrity, and even if it is OK, checking the CPC potential to true Earth (as what is probably under the concrete floor) is not always done.
My only experience of that was a mate's father's home, said he got shocks from the garage door. Turned out no incoming supply earth to MET connection and recently an electric fire was added that the fixing screw managed to puncture the live. Result was whole house at 230V
No idea if it was just missing at the start, or some muppet had removed it for whatever reason.
update. went round this morning. this is what i found:
mem rewireable CU. all outgoing cables no sheath inside enclosure, holes in to IP00, could park a bus in them.but the main fault was the 6.0mm main earth cable . comes out of MET up behind CU and instead of connecting to the CU E bar, it loops round and back to MET. cut and connected correctly and fault cleared. then. 1 light circuit had a 30A fuse carrier bodged in ( the blades are thicker, so it was hanging by a thread, just making contact. must have disturbed it when i took the cover off, so then sparks fron the fuse. correct 5A fuse was lying in bottom of cabinet. fitted that with a new fuse wire and lights on no problems. total time on site 90 minutes.
mem rewireable CU. all outgoing cables no sheath inside enclosure, holes in to IP00, could park a bus in them.but the main fault was the 6.0mm main earth cable . comes out of MET up behind CU and instead of connecting to the CU E bar, it loops round and back to MET. cut and connected correctly and fault cleared. then. 1 light circuit had a 30A fuse carrier bodged in ( the blades are thicker, so it was hanging by a thread, just making contact. must have disturbed it when i took the cover off, so then sparks fron the fuse. correct 5A fuse was lying in bottom of cabinet. fitted that with a new fuse wire and lights on no problems. total time on site 90 minutes.
Why would someone do that with the earth lead, seems very strange, unless they where thinking it would clear the fault. ?
it disappears into the wall with the T/Es. was dubious about trying to trace in case of disturbing something else.
In my own flat there was some 6mm running from the MET to "somewhere".
Later when a new gas supply & meter was fitted and they had to cut back the rear of the under sink kitchen cupboard for the external pipe coming in (no longer allowed a riser in the building centre) and LO! there was the 6mm coiled up ready to be connected to the cold water pipe.
Clearly they had fitted the kitchen before the sparky had got round to putting on the pipe clamp for extraneous bonding. Had been like that since the 90s I guess.
pc1966 I have just upvoted your post by clicking on the arrow on the right hand side, but I have no idea what it does.
Oh just noticed at the top of the page there is an option to sort by date or votes, will that change the order you see the post, could make a nonsense of someone answering a post immediately above?
Oh just noticed at the top of the page there is an option to sort by date or votes, will that change the order you see the post, could make a nonsense of someone answering a post immediately above?
It looks to me that the bodged MEM unit could even be a replacement from many years ago as you can see the skimmed round rectangle above where the cables are stripped back looks about the size of a 4 way Wylex ?
looked like that to me but probably original was a 6 way. most likely a wood backed wylex, or something even olser. it's a teaaced house, town centre si pre WW2. the MEM board probably went in when it was rewired ( 1980?).as all cables are pvc.
who knows? customer has been in the house 11 months. been getting shocks from soon after moving in.
been today and fitted a RCBO CU. ( fitted above cabinet with cables dug out higher up to give some wriggle room and get all sheaths inside CU enclosure.) the thin earth wire went behing the old CU, where it was joined to a 6.0mm bonding cable. other end of which was attached to the water intake, as expected. but..... gave it a tug and 3 ft, of it came out of the capping for the water pipes where it had been snipped. last week my reading to the water pipe was 0.84 ohms, apparently it was picking up from the gas at boiler and/or parallel paths through the cpc's. rejoined cable and wander lead got the R to water down to 0.27 ohms. IR tests gave worst reading of 47Meg. r1, r2, rN on ring all good. Zs readings well within limits. Happy sparks and happy customer. 5 hours on site with a mate doing the donkey work and fitting a socket for new washing machine.
Well done Tel.... you sound like every housewife's dream !!
forgot to mention the horrific bodge on a light switch. 3 x T/E 1.0mm and 3 singles extended inside the pannelling round the water piped to sink, using choc blocks and cores stripped out of flex, these chock blocks sitting against the pipes, extended into a 3 gang switch. 2 x 2 way switches for kitchen and landing. 3rd switch had a cpc in L1 and customer wondered why fuse blew when he switched it. no load connected to it. me lad stripped all the shyte out and refitted switch 12" higher up directly onto the T/E and singles. blank plate over old switch position.
I’m not sure about UK way of doing things and I’m not sure exactly how y’all heat your water but in the US we have water heaters with 2 immersion heating elements and I went to a similar call and 1 element was bad and when you touched any sink, spickets, etc you would get shocked and as above with just socks on your giving it a path to ground. Again we are very different in many ways of how electrical is done
in this case, the house had no earth whatsoever. there were several faults in the installation.
We are quite different yeah... like we don't have "spickets" here... well, not anywhere south of Birmingham anyway.
What a great thread. We don't often get a thread where a forum member has gone around and can then give good feedback. Well done Tel!
Completely agree with @pc1966 . How scary is it that an initial electrician went round and didn't find anything! Frustrating too as you hear this sort of story too often!
So when you initially did a Zs at one of the sockets @telectrix did you get a reading? I'm guessing you must have done as the gas was bonded. Did you discover the 6mm earth was just looped back to the MET by testing or could you just see it?
Completely agree with @pc1966 . How scary is it that an initial electrician went round and didn't find anything! Frustrating too as you hear this sort of story too often!
So when you initially did a Zs at one of the sockets @telectrix did you get a reading? I'm guessing you must have done as the gas was bonded. Did you discover the 6mm earth was just looped back to the MET by testing or could you just see it?
initially used a socket tester to give an idea. showed fault , so then opened CU and no 6mm to earth bar. tugged on the 6mm from MET and saw the other end looped round behind CU.
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