J
Jimmy_Trick
Hi Folks,
Bit of an introduction thread - I'm a total newbie on this forum and looking for a bit of advice.
Just moved in with my gf for the first time as tenants in a nice new build flat. We're the first people to live in there since it was built.
We're moving in yesterday and she and I keep getting odd little electric shocks from stuff. First we noticed our dyson (handheld, battery power) kept giving us little electric shocks.
Then, more worryingly we noticed that the 'edge' of the electric towel rail was giving us weird static shocks. This electric towel rail is a chrome, liquid filled jobbie that's electrically connected to the wall, but is isolated in the 'plumbing' sense from the rest of the water supply => i.e. it's a self contained unit.
At first we thought it was just static - it's a brand new property, we were getting a bit mucky moving lots of boxes and we thought we were probably just picking up charge as we were wearing knackered old primark clothes to move things about.
Noticed that every time we touched the 'edge' of the electric towel rail we got a little shock on the backs of our hands. We didn't get it from our palms (I presume we've got thicker skin => higher resistance than the shin skin on our backs). We also only noticed it on the 'edge' of the electric towel rail, which kinda made sense, as when we touched the main 'body' of the steel rails there was enough conductor that the path of least resistance was still 'within' the metal.
Despite now being a boring old accountant these days, my first degree was in Physics so I went into detective mode and dug an old multi-meter out of the back of our car we used when we were trying to work out why our car wouldn't start (alternator failed!) and started poking things.
The only metal thing nearby was the main mixer tap. I opened up the cupboard under the sink and pawed around till I felt the little metal grounding strip thing so I figured it made a pretty good ground and started poking things.
I detected no DC current and no appreciable DC voltage. HOWEVER, on V AC mode, I detected a bias of 50 volts AC., even when it was switched off on the plug. It only dropped to zero (actually like 1-2v AC, but figured that was probably just noise on my crappy old multimeter) when I flipped the 'radiator' circuit off the main fusebox.
Three questions:
*Firstly, can someone who isn't the muppet lettings agency worker tell me that I'm not imagining that this definitely isn't normal /a bit dangerous? I would assume anything electrical should either be a) earthed, or b) double insulated? I spent a lot of time when I was younger dicking around with breadboards and 741 Op amps so 99.9999% certain an electric towel rail shouldn't have a 50volts AC charge on it, but I'd really appreciate someone just confirming this as I'm happy to admit I know zilch about 230mains and the person I spoke to at the agency was about as helpful as an asbestos confetti...
*Any idea what is causing this? My gut feeling is that if there's an insulative liner between the fluid inside the tube and the metal, it's probably failed, or, alternatively, the person wiring it up as put the live / neutral in the earth. I figure an educated guess might be helpful to try and convince the agency there is actually a problem!
*How serious is this? I mean, the shocks we got were very much in the 'oh I just got an electric shock, how odd' category than 'jesus wept that was painful' - but presumably these sort of things should have been checked when the thing was built / installed?! We were lucky we were only touching it with dry hands, using v=IR, I figure at 50 volts, with say 5-10kohs resistance of human skin (I googled it), we probably got just around the 1mA mark of current which I remember from my own education isn't all that much - but I worry very much what would have happened if we grabbed it reaching for a towel out the shower!!
Bit of an introduction thread - I'm a total newbie on this forum and looking for a bit of advice.
Just moved in with my gf for the first time as tenants in a nice new build flat. We're the first people to live in there since it was built.
We're moving in yesterday and she and I keep getting odd little electric shocks from stuff. First we noticed our dyson (handheld, battery power) kept giving us little electric shocks.
Then, more worryingly we noticed that the 'edge' of the electric towel rail was giving us weird static shocks. This electric towel rail is a chrome, liquid filled jobbie that's electrically connected to the wall, but is isolated in the 'plumbing' sense from the rest of the water supply => i.e. it's a self contained unit.
At first we thought it was just static - it's a brand new property, we were getting a bit mucky moving lots of boxes and we thought we were probably just picking up charge as we were wearing knackered old primark clothes to move things about.
Noticed that every time we touched the 'edge' of the electric towel rail we got a little shock on the backs of our hands. We didn't get it from our palms (I presume we've got thicker skin => higher resistance than the shin skin on our backs). We also only noticed it on the 'edge' of the electric towel rail, which kinda made sense, as when we touched the main 'body' of the steel rails there was enough conductor that the path of least resistance was still 'within' the metal.
Despite now being a boring old accountant these days, my first degree was in Physics so I went into detective mode and dug an old multi-meter out of the back of our car we used when we were trying to work out why our car wouldn't start (alternator failed!) and started poking things.
The only metal thing nearby was the main mixer tap. I opened up the cupboard under the sink and pawed around till I felt the little metal grounding strip thing so I figured it made a pretty good ground and started poking things.
I detected no DC current and no appreciable DC voltage. HOWEVER, on V AC mode, I detected a bias of 50 volts AC., even when it was switched off on the plug. It only dropped to zero (actually like 1-2v AC, but figured that was probably just noise on my crappy old multimeter) when I flipped the 'radiator' circuit off the main fusebox.
Three questions:
*Firstly, can someone who isn't the muppet lettings agency worker tell me that I'm not imagining that this definitely isn't normal /a bit dangerous? I would assume anything electrical should either be a) earthed, or b) double insulated? I spent a lot of time when I was younger dicking around with breadboards and 741 Op amps so 99.9999% certain an electric towel rail shouldn't have a 50volts AC charge on it, but I'd really appreciate someone just confirming this as I'm happy to admit I know zilch about 230mains and the person I spoke to at the agency was about as helpful as an asbestos confetti...
*Any idea what is causing this? My gut feeling is that if there's an insulative liner between the fluid inside the tube and the metal, it's probably failed, or, alternatively, the person wiring it up as put the live / neutral in the earth. I figure an educated guess might be helpful to try and convince the agency there is actually a problem!
*How serious is this? I mean, the shocks we got were very much in the 'oh I just got an electric shock, how odd' category than 'jesus wept that was painful' - but presumably these sort of things should have been checked when the thing was built / installed?! We were lucky we were only touching it with dry hands, using v=IR, I figure at 50 volts, with say 5-10kohs resistance of human skin (I googled it), we probably got just around the 1mA mark of current which I remember from my own education isn't all that much - but I worry very much what would have happened if we grabbed it reaching for a towel out the shower!!