SOT: "electric shock" in the bath

[Another John]

This is "slightly off-topic" because it doesn't affect me, but I'm curious for the explanation...

Just returned from a holiday in the Canaries (in a very good hotel).

When taking a shower on the first day, my hand felt numb when I grasped the bath handle in order to get out of the shower (which is located over the bath).

Then I realised that actually my hand was "fizzing" - an electric shock.

I tested it again when out of the shower, and sure enough I hadn't imagined it. (The floor was very wet, and I had bare feet, but I'd first experienced it whilst in the shower.)

I reported it and the hotel took corrective action, but I never saw the fixer, and in any case wouldn't have been able to ask him: what was causing this?

Just curious, basically. (And grateful that it wasn't an *actual* full-blast shock!)

Cheers John

[GB]

We had an electrically powered shower installed in our holiday home in Norfolk. I never saw who installed it, but I suspect corners were cut. My son said he got a similar 'tingle' to the one you mention, and a qualified electrician was called in. It turned out that the wires for neutral and earth had been mixed up. Not on the shower, but on the feed to the immersion heater, from which the shower had been T'd off. The immersion heater installation had been made (and used frequently) over

40 years ago!

[ARW]

Nice one. "I tested it again"

[Graham.]

I had a similar experiance when I was 10, in an outdoor hotel swimming pool in L'Escala, Costa Brava.

I imaine after 51 years it will be fixed (BICBW).

[Brian Gaff]

Probably a mounting screw for said bar scewed through a cable in the wall. Seen it done back in the day. Its when the fitters cannot be bothered to ask where the cables run, sods law will dictate that wherever it is, you will find it, not in a good way. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

The Canaries are of course well known for their bodged electricity supplies. Once in the 1980s I found that a bed side light had had its cable extended with a bit of odd flex. the dual cores were just twisted together, and each wrapped in duct tape with a big bulge of it over them, and the mains plug, a two pin right at floor level seemed to have been fitted by poking the wirees in from the back, till they came out the screw holes the pins went in, then the pins screwed in, leaveing bits of the flex wire outside, so even when it was in the socket, if padding about in bare feet you could get a shock off the wires. This was not an isolated incident.. pun intended.

There was a Parrot in a cage in a cafe. The bird had managed to nibble part way through a wire to a fan on a shelf, and had survived. I pointed it out to the chap and he went out the back and wrapped it in duct tape and carried on selling his wares.

Brian

[Capitol]

Young and immortal?

[Bill]

In message , Another John writes

Curiosity killed the cat. Just be VERY grateful that it wasn't any worse than it was.

While I do like the test procedure of :-

"I tested it again when out of the shower, and sure enough I hadn't imagined it. (The floor was very wet, and I had bare feet, but I'd first experienced it whilst in the shower.)"

I do feel that having bare feet on a wet floor gave you an unfair advantage of killing yourself.

Would you mind if I put you forward for the "Darwin Award" this year?

Although please remember that there are still another 9 months to go of the year, so don't be surprised if someone else wins, possibly posthumously.

[Bill]

In message , Brian Gaff writes

My late father, a normally quite sane and intelligent man, phoned me back sometime in the 1970s to say that he was getting a tingling feeling when touching the wall in the hallway at home. Since we had just rewired the house, removed lots of lead sheathed cabling, I was concerned. Although he had helped, and knew just where the cabling ran, he decided to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture, directly above a

4 gang light switch.

[spuorgelgoog]

An instance where it would probably have been safer to leave the old lead sheathed cable in use.

I found myself strangely tempted to centre a picture below a wall light and above a switch in the bedroom the other day.

Owain

[Nick]

In message , Bill writes

IIRC a prerequisite for winning is being dead. Andreas Lubitz might be a strong contender.

[Cursitor Doom]

He'd have got away with it in the house I now live in. The "electrician" who fitted a new light switch at some time or other ran the cable to it diagonally!

[Bill]

The same "electrician" may have wired the Triton T80 electric shower for the previous owner of the house. The 2.5mm T&E was diagonally across the back of the shower wall!

___Yes 2.5mm___

>

[Another John]

Bah -- old enough to realise I'm not immortal after all -- that began to dawn on me when I passed 60.

No seriously chaps ... what can have caused this? [1]

My thinking in "testing it again" was: that was not a _shock_ (I've had a couple of them in my life and by god it's not something I go looking for!). However it was *was* "electricity" albeit low-grade. Kind of like a static shock, but continuous.

Since my wife was all set to follow me into the shower I wanted to be sure I hadn't imagined it.

I thought that it might even be caused by the shower putting water all over the floor (tiled of course), and that water running down below the floor had created a live scenario behind all the tiling in the bathroom

- wherever it was damp.

I agree about the electrical standards Brian: everywhere I've been in Spain (admittedly only the Balearics and the Canaries), 50% of everything looks fab --- except for where it looks absolutely shit (the other 50%), and positively dangerous (structures, roads, electrics, machinery, etc etc etc). And behind all the fab facade I'm also certain there's a shit infrastructure .... that there Adam could clean up out there!

John

[1] Surely (Brian) if the handle-fixing had passed through a cable, I'd have got a *lot* more than a "buzz"?!

[Another John]

Bill -thanks. Sorry - my News-reader split this thread in two, and I didn't see your reply here. See my reply elsewhere, which, summarised, says "Since it was a buzz and not a _shock_ I felt safe to check if I hadn't imagined it."

You seem to imply that if one feels a buzz, the correct action is

**not** to assume that the buzz won't turn into a fatal bolt?

Cheers John

[Bill]

In message , Another John writes

I didn't intend any implication, my only thoughts are that if I feel even a minor buzz I don't touch again until I get it checked out, either by me or someone whose job it is on site.

I'm glad that you are still here to reply :-)

[ARW]

Glad that you are still here fella.

I have come across this twice at work and in both cases I found an earth fault.

1. A garden pond where a customer could feel a tingle when they put their hands into the water along with the comment "the further I put my arms into the water the stronger the tingle". The earth to the pond electrics was open circuit (and there was no RCD protection)
2. A tingling sensation from the water/taps in the house. This was a PME supply that had no main earth connection to the cut out and also had no main equipotential bonding to the incoming copper water pipe.

In both cases I suspect that they were feeling nothing more than the tingle from a capacator and I am sure that they were not getting a full 240V.

[jrwalliker]

Many years ago my next door neighbour mentioned that he got a tingling sens ation when picking the soap out of its dish - which was recessed into the t iling next to the bath. He had thought nothing of it until his wife and da ughter also mentioned similar experiences. The most recent electricity bil l had been much more than usual too. Being a bank manager he did notice th at.

It turned out that he had replaced a bedroom light switch. The perished ru bber cable insulation had fallen off. The conduit system was not earthed a nywhere. A conduit from the fuse box ran directly behind the recessed soap dish in the bathroom.

The increase in the electricity bill suggested an earth leakage current of several amps flowing through the brickwork of the house.

John

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I had something similar recently - a metal-faced light switch that tingled when you touched it. It found out that the earths of all the downstairs light fittings were daisy chained, but not in a complete loop, and one earth wire in a rose very close to the CU had popped out. It meant that although the earths of all the downstairs light fittings were connected to each other, only two of them were actually earthed. A current was being induced in the earth wire in the flat twin and earth cable, and when I measured it, it was at about 70 volts. Although the act of measuring it was sufficient to discharge it almost immediately to zero.

I found it by measuring the voltage present between various light fittings and nearby mains socket earths. It just shows you what can be lurking in the average house.

[michael newport]

Ot: ot

Isobel Barnett From

"... .On Sunday evening she was found dead in the bath,into which she had thrown an electric heater,causing ventricular fibrillation and heart attack.The local doctor gave the cause of death unusually as uremia,her body was cremated in haste before a full post-mortem could be carried out,and the whole affair was hushed up."

ps Uremia or uraemia (see spelling differences) can be translated as "urea in the blood". Urea is one of the primary components of urine. It can be defined as an excess of amino acid and protein metabolism end products, such as urea and creatinine, in the blood that would be normally excreted in the urine. The Uremic Syndrome can be defined as the terminal clinical manifestation of kidney failure (also called renal failure).[1] It is the signs, symptoms and results from laboratory tests which result from inadequate excretory, regulatory and endocrine function of the kidneys.[2] Both uremia and the uremic syndrome have been used interchangeably to define a very high plasma urea concentration that is the result of renal failure.[1] The latter definition will be used for the rest of the article.