Electrified shower water...

[Barns]

Hi,

I'm not an electrician, I'm just looking for some advice, I hope that's OK!

I don't live in the UK any more, I live in rural Laos now running an ecolodge resort so think basic electrics rather than modern Western electrics! We recently had a two-day power cut with several power surges which blew a few things but mostly OK, these things happen a lot here. However, my electric shower unit now provides me with lovely electrified water! I have changed nothing on the shower system and it's a quality (well as good as you can get here) Panasonic unit only a few months old so I can't understand why this would suddenly happen. Could something have blown on the circuit boards inside? I had a look inside and it all still looks brand new, none of it's wet inside.

It has an Earth Leakage Breaker (ELB) rather than the RCD they usually have in the west and it tripped every time I tried to reset it. As a result, I looked at the earth cable buried outside and it was in a very wet patch of ground so, maybe stupidly, I thought that may be drawing too much current or whatever (remember I'm not an electrician, far from it!) so moved it to a drier patch and buried it and then the ELB didn't trip. However, this was when I discovered why it was obviously tripping since I put my hand in to test the temperature and got a tingle, not a full shock I don't think, it certainly didn't hurt or anything, more like putting your tongue on a 9V battery.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[IQ Electrical]

Hi,

I'm not an electrician, I'm just looking for some advice, I hope that's OK!

I don't live in the UK any more, I live in rural Laos now running an ecolodge resort so think basic electrics rather than modern Western electrics! We recently had a two-day power cut with several power surges which blew a few things but mostly OK, these things happen a lot here. However, my electric shower unit now provides me with lovely electrified water! I have changed nothing on the shower system and it's a quality (well as good as you can get here) Panasonic unit only a few months old so I can't understand why this would suddenly happen. Could something have blown on the circuit boards inside? I had a look inside and it all still looks brand new, none of it's wet inside.

It has an Earth Leakage Breaker (ELB) rather than the RCD they usually have in the west and it tripped every time I tried to reset it. As a result, I looked at the earth cable buried outside and it was in a very wet patch of ground so, maybe stupidly, I thought that may be drawing too much current or whatever (remember I'm not an electrician, far from it!) so moved it to a drier patch and buried it and then the ELB didn't trip. However, this was when I discovered why it was obviously tripping since I put my hand in to test the temperature and got a tingle, not a full shock I don't think, it certainly didn't hurt or anything, more like putting your tongue on a 9V battery.

Thanks in advance for any help!

You effectively removed the means of earthing for the installation by installing it in dry ground!

It sounds like a fault on the element of the electric shower, causing earth leakage-that's why the ELB/RCD device was tripping (doing it's job).

You really need an electrician to install the earth electrode correctly (don't just put it back into the original hole) and diagnose/rectify the shower fault.

 

[Deleted member 9648]

There is clearly a live to earth fault somewhere,coupled with the fact that the earth fault protection seems unreliable,you have a dangerous situation.....isolate the circuit until it is checked by a competant electrician,or whatever you have out there.....I'd come out myself but the travelling time may be a bit excessive.

 

[Sintra]

Ok. Moving your earth rod to a dry patch will be worse than it being on the wet ground. In my opinion get a spark out to have a look and check earths.


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[SDELEC]

woh there!! we used to water the ground around earth rods ( for telephones in the earth calling days) to get them to work better not t'other way round, as above isolate and call a spark