But domestic installation (as opposed to testing) work by someone who is 'at work' is illegal under the Electricity at Work regulations 1989, regulation 14:
Work on or near live conductors
No person shall be engaged in any work activity on or so near any live conductor (other than one suitably covered with insulating material so as to prevent danger) that danger may arise unless?
(a)it is unreasonable in all the circumstances for it to be dead; and
(b)it is reasonable in all the circumstances for him to be at work on or near it while it is live; and
(c)suitable precautions (including where necessary the provision of suitable protective equipment) are taken to prevent injury.
What could make it unreasonable for a domestic final circuit to be made dead in order to work on it?
ng the dishwasher, I was leaning on the worktop with my hand on the stainle ss steel sink. On touching the inside of the diskwasher, I got a tingle.
ink is approximately 55 to 60 VAC.
PD of about 55-60 VAC with the sink.
trical earth in the socket service the d/w and the radiators is alos approx 55-60 VAC.
I checked other kitchen sockets, and yes, you've guessed it, PD of about 5
5-60 VAC between electrical earth presented at the socket and the water pip es. And the same with stuff on yet another way in the consumer unit.
ect not, but it would be nice to have this confirmed).
professional electrician back who installed the new consumer unit, but I w ant to make sure I ask the right questions. Is it possible to simply forget to connect the protective earth through the consumer unit, so the 'downstr eam' side simply has a floating earth? So it could be a simple 'forgot to c onnect up a final wire'? That is, a could a missing single connection affec t all ways?
xt to each other in the common corridor outside the flats - one consumer un it per cupboard. The neighbours have not replaced their cartridge fuse cons umer units, so still have an exposed earth terminal in their cupboards, and I was able to confirm that the all the metal cupboards (including mine) ar e connected to a protective earth which has zero PD with respect to the wat er pipes.
dication of the leakage current it sees by flashing a multicoloured LED in a code in 'test mode'. On testing this, it gives a suspicious (to me) readi ng of 0 mA leakage; as does the RCBO covering the other kitchen equipment. To me, this seems to good to be true.
I should have snipped some/all.
who did the job is being pulled off other work to 'come in for an interview ', and a different electrician is coming out 'first thing' tomorrow to look at the issue.
not a heisenbug.
was done, and I was told I would get the necessary documentation later: of course, I got the bill, but I don't seem to have a copy of any testing docu ments. I will be very interested to see what the outcome is tomorrow.
to come back to the flat briefly while he was adding a new wall-mounted soc ket, and he was working alone, live - that is, he had not isolated the circ uit he was working on. I was a tad surprised at this.
Electrician been and gone. Turned out to be the same chap as did the instal lation first time round. He didn't even check the symptoms, but had the fro nt of the consumer unit off two miutes after coming through the door, expos ing the DIN rail the RCBOs were mounted on, and wired in a single earth cab le from what I presume was a common or supplier earth point to
Can you see the size of the earth wire he connected into the consumer unit? It should be quite beefy as it provides the path for fault current to trip breakers should a fault to earth develop.
My earth wire here is 10mm2 (the cross sectional area of the copper) and that is just over 6mm in diameter, yours should be no less.
I'd be asking the firm for an inspection by a different electrician, at their cost of course.
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