hi, i wonder if anyone can help. recently i started to get a mild shock...equivalent to static getting out of a car sometimes.................... from my shower taps , and rose....in our ensuite bathroom.....only when when the water was on and only intermittently . We have copper piping. No plastic pipes in the supply line. Shower was refitted 9 months previously and until now no problems i had electricians in and they said "earth problem and put a new earth stake in to house. Didnt solve the problem thought i better have a look so i took some tiles off thinking i must have a live wire nearby ...all looks well ,,..no wires. turning individual fuses off doesnt make any difference any suggestions
how do you know these things make no differece? are you still getting into the shower? If so I nominate you for a Darwin award. If youre getting shocks off a shower it is thoroughly dangerous, and should not be used for any reason until the problem is fully resolved.
3 what is your supply arrangement to the house?
4 how is earth fault protection provided for your installation, if a "breaker" is involved make and model and have you tried any test button function? (although this only actually tests the mechanism not the system)
5 did the electricians carry out any meaningful testing such as insulation resistance tests for the shower and the whole installation, earth fault loop impedance?
7 why do you think they are competent
The fitting of a new earth stake would suggest you may have a TT system. If so then any earth fault "should" have caused a circuit breaker to operate and disconnect the supply to the shower and possibly the whole installation
Bonding between shower and bath or shower tray and any other surrounding metal work needs to be checked, as well as earth loop impedance. It could be that the shower is properly earthed, but something else you are touching is live.
Don't use the shower until this problem has been resolved.
Leak through the insulation casing on the element possibly. Sounds like the element is occasionally getting wet or the gland at the base is letting by....assuming it's an electric shower that is.
If it ain't......GET A MAN IN from the leccy board before you die
Where exactly are you measuring between? Whatever the answer to that, there shouldnt be any voltage there, but it will help to know.
There should be a number of barriers against a user getting a shock from a shower, if you do then all these safety barriers are missing or defective, ie its in a right state, and doesnt just need one thing fixing.
The shower metalwork should be connected to the CPC (Earth wire) which should be connected via the CU (fusebox) to your local earth rod. TT systems should always use an RCD to feed showers so that on earth leakage the RCD cuts the power. Earth rod and earth wiring should keep the shower at earth potential even during low or medium levels of leakage. Equipotential bonding in the bathroom should keep bath, plughole and shower head at the same potential whatever happens, avoiding any shock while in the shower. Various other metalwork in the room should also be equi bonded, several items of whcih should also be earthed. Also the shower should not leak mains to metalwork in the first place.
So guessing as to the likelies here - and some of these are only probably guesses: the electric shower is passing current to the case the shower is not earthed the RCD is missing the equipotential bonding is missing - and this is one installation type where it is needed maybe water piping is not earthed also for some reason
All of these are unsafe. The whole thing sounds bad news. You should not be looking to rectify one fault but to redo the whole thing tbh, making it safe at each point along the way. Also given the number of dangers evident its quite likely there are other safety problems present too.
As you don't know the details of the problems I'd suggest looking for a competent qualified electrician to install anew. I doubt your last sparkie knew what he was doing, as it must be seriously unsafe now. I also can't think of any way that a new earth rod could resolve all these problems, though it might have resolved one, but apparently didnt.
6a. An earth leakage test with a sensitive clamp meter ("earth leakage clamp meter") on the CPC with the shower operating might reveal something which an insulation resistance test doesn't pick up.
6b. Similarly a check with the same instrument around all three cores of the supply cable would detect any residual current flowing out through the plumbing, the bonding or the water stream.
NT is probably right, but it *could* be something quite different. It's possible that all the metal bits are correctly bonded and/or earthed, and that the non-metalic surfaces are live in the presence of water due to a fault with some other wiring.
A few years ago I was getting tingles from the plaster walls of a bedroom in a new extension while hanging wallpaper - but only when the walls were wet with size. I eventually found that one of the screws - used by the builders to hold the skirting board on - was penetrating a live cable, making the metal capping and surrounding plaster live. But plaster is not a good conductor - and the problem was only apparent when it was wet. Shower cubicles are invariably wet!
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