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Yes, it's another EICR coding question - hurrah!
Inspecting a small 1 bed 70s ex-council flat that was going well. Main Bonding had been put in place in advance and most of the tests were as perfect as you could get. Seriously, if you wanted to set up a 'perfect' test rig I don't think you could have done better.
Then I got to the bathroom, which proved more interesting.
Electric shower, with 30mA RCD protection.
Class 2 light, and Class 2 Ceiling Fan not RCD protected.
Supp(?) bonding in place and verified to pipes under the sink, where a passive descaler device had been fitted to the cold pipe that then ran up at nice head height to the shower. (Some of you may see where this is going)
Unable to verify Supp bonding conductor at the light.
Some of the shower feed was in nice chrome pipe, with the last bit in copper, though it had all been painted.
Tested near the shower (not through paint!), and sure enough - no continuity to the pipe, though a very low IR test. And of course the descaler magnetic thing had nice insulated plastic push fittings.
Fortunately there was enough slack on the bonding to bridge the device, and then the pipework near the shower had perfect continuity and overall well under 0.05 back to the MET which was in a cupboard adjacent.
While trying to work out coding, I ran into a possible contradiction in the Best Practise Guide.
On the one hand it suggests under situations for Code 2:
Which is fair enough and what I already had in my head.
However, it then later has a section for "non compliances that do not give rise to danger and do not require reporting"
Which includes:
Which left me a little confused, since BS7671 (701.415.2) states supp bonding should be connected to Class 1 AND Class 2 fittings.
Given that the shower in this case was RCD protected, and the pipework bonding verified after adjustment, I did not consider this was a case for a C2 on Supp Bonding. But the BPG seems to suggest not coding or even reporting the lack of it at the light, which seems counter intuitive - and ticking the box without reporting would make it appear that it was in place.
I will certainly be noting it in the comments, but wondering what other people's views are on situations like this that are in a grey area? Would you put it as a C3, or just note it, or C2 regardless due to lack of RCD on the Class 2 light? Anyone with a copy of Codebreakers want to see if it makes things any clearer?
Clearly in terms of safety the practical end purpose of supplementary bonding is to bring all extraneous-conductive-parts within the area to the same potential and that was met.
In this case, since the CU and MET were literally in a cupboard beside the bathroom, there is even an argument that effective supp bonding existed within the CU, since the feed to each circuit was so short, but obviously that isn't normally the case.
Pic of the shower feed pipe in case you haven't seen a pipe before...
Inspecting a small 1 bed 70s ex-council flat that was going well. Main Bonding had been put in place in advance and most of the tests were as perfect as you could get. Seriously, if you wanted to set up a 'perfect' test rig I don't think you could have done better.
Then I got to the bathroom, which proved more interesting.
Electric shower, with 30mA RCD protection.
Class 2 light, and Class 2 Ceiling Fan not RCD protected.
Supp(?) bonding in place and verified to pipes under the sink, where a passive descaler device had been fitted to the cold pipe that then ran up at nice head height to the shower. (Some of you may see where this is going)
Unable to verify Supp bonding conductor at the light.
Some of the shower feed was in nice chrome pipe, with the last bit in copper, though it had all been painted.
Tested near the shower (not through paint!), and sure enough - no continuity to the pipe, though a very low IR test. And of course the descaler magnetic thing had nice insulated plastic push fittings.
Fortunately there was enough slack on the bonding to bridge the device, and then the pipework near the shower had perfect continuity and overall well under 0.05 back to the MET which was in a cupboard adjacent.
While trying to work out coding, I ran into a possible contradiction in the Best Practise Guide.
On the one hand it suggests under situations for Code 2:
Absence of supplementary bonding where required (such as in a location containing a bath or shower), where any of the following three conditions are not satisfied:
- All final circuits of the location comply with the requirements of Regulation 411.3.2 for automatic disconnection, and
- All final circuits of the location have additional protection by means of a 30 mA RCD, and
- All extraneous-conductive-parts of the location are effectively connected to the protective equipotential bonding (main earthing terminal)
Which is fair enough and what I already had in my head.
However, it then later has a section for "non compliances that do not give rise to danger and do not require reporting"
Which includes:
Absence of supplementary bonding for installed Class II equipment where required (such as in a location containing a bath or shower), in case the equipment is replaced with Class I equipment in the future.
Which left me a little confused, since BS7671 (701.415.2) states supp bonding should be connected to Class 1 AND Class 2 fittings.
Given that the shower in this case was RCD protected, and the pipework bonding verified after adjustment, I did not consider this was a case for a C2 on Supp Bonding. But the BPG seems to suggest not coding or even reporting the lack of it at the light, which seems counter intuitive - and ticking the box without reporting would make it appear that it was in place.
I will certainly be noting it in the comments, but wondering what other people's views are on situations like this that are in a grey area? Would you put it as a C3, or just note it, or C2 regardless due to lack of RCD on the Class 2 light? Anyone with a copy of Codebreakers want to see if it makes things any clearer?
Clearly in terms of safety the practical end purpose of supplementary bonding is to bring all extraneous-conductive-parts within the area to the same potential and that was met.
In this case, since the CU and MET were literally in a cupboard beside the bathroom, there is even an argument that effective supp bonding existed within the CU, since the feed to each circuit was so short, but obviously that isn't normally the case.
Pic of the shower feed pipe in case you haven't seen a pipe before...