electricity and rain

[The Natural Philosopher]

contact with anything that will be attacked by carbonic acid essentially.

[Martin Brown]

Apparently some people seem to think so :(

[grimly4]

A house my folks bought had a loft light in it, which was activated by opening the hatch and plugging a socket into a plug - yes, that's right.

[ARWadsworth]

plugging a socket into a plug?

[grimly4]

More correct to say 'onto a plug'. The plug pins were the live feed. Imagine putting up the loft hatch and fishing around in the dark for a plug to put into a socket on the wall. Dead common, that. Only it was wired arse for tit. The socket was wired to the lights.

[ARWadsworth]

I cannot see how it could be less correct: safety wise:-)

I would rather not do that.

Dead seems to be an option

I love to see such wiring.

[Andrew Mawson]

When I was a student (1968 !!!!) I had a holiday job at a place with a semi portable out door bench saw that had a socket screwed to it, and was powered by a wander lead with a plug at both ends. When I explained to the manager how dangerous it was he took a long time to realise, then it dawned on him and he went pale!!!

AWEM

[Andrew Gabriel]

My outdoor sockets circuit is on a 20A Type C 10mA RCBO (and connected as a TT circuit, i.e. earthed via earth rod).

Yep - I also know of a case. 1/5th of my student hall of residence lost power (someone apparently flushed a toilet roll down the loo, and the resulting flood wrecked the 200A 3-phase bus bar riser up that corner of the building, but that's another story).

To get power back into the Warden's flat, the resident engineer made up an extension lead with a plug on both ends, to connect the Warden's flat ring circuit to the cleaner's supply in the coridoor, which was still working. A day or two later, the warden unplugged it, and got one hell of a belt off the live plug pins. (This was before RCDs existed.) I was asked to look and see what was wrong - well that was rather obvious to me! I redid it a different way.

[js.b1]

From testing water conductivity in a plastic pipe (ERA)...

- 100cm of tap water, 15mm pipe = 115,000 ohms

- 100cm of tap water, 22mm pipe = 65,000 ohms

- 100cm of double dosed inhibitor, 15mm pipe = 20,200 ohms

A 1cm length of water may have from 1,150 to 202 ohms (or even less) at LV voltages.

I have a suspicion some greenhouse people deliberately do not fit an RCD because they do not want the electric heater tripping off due to a damp element or leak, putting the safety of their vegetables ahead of the vegetable between their ears.

Use a working 30mA RCD - that is to say check it is working.

Some people use a plug-in / inline RCD even on an RCD protected circuit simply because it is quicker than digging out the junk piled up near a CU cupboard under the stairs. RCDs should still be tested regularly because they can and do suffer stiction.

[John Rumm]

Often just means you now have two to reset ;-)