Oddities at a friends new house!!

[sergeantash]

Just visited my friend's new house on which they've just completed purchase, whilst walking around I spotted some rather odd electrical configurations that I thought to share with you guys, not for answers necessarily but because I'm curious!

- There was a double socket in an extension, into one of the sockets was a mains plug attached to a very thin cable sheaved in earth sheaving, I commented that I didn't like the look of it and so we immediately unplugged it. I opened up the plug to find that it was ONLY an earth wire connected. We traced the wire as far as we could and it led to the bathroom at the end of the extension, it ran under the bath and disappeared somewhere near the sink. Whatever the previous owner was thinking, this sounds dangerous and rather odd.

- Walking into the outside shed, the owner has extended the electrics from the house, instead of using armoured cable or adequate protection, he had simply run 1.5mm cable through a hosepipe and then into a series of extension lead to extension lead to extension lead etc etc...

Apparently the previous owner was a HAM radio enthusiast and I guess used to 12v rather than 240v!

I advised my friend to call an electrician ASAP to inspect the whole house as I'm sure this isn't the worst of what is to be found in this property!! I'll keep you updated when I hear back from him.

 

[Iggifer]

- There was a double socket in an extension, into one of the sockets was a mains plug attached to a very thin cable sheaved in earth sheaving, I commented that I didn't like the look of it and so we immediately unplugged it. We traced the wire as far as we could and it led to the bathroom at the end of the extension, it ran under the bath and disappeared somewhere near the sink. Whatever the previous owner was thinking, this sounds dangerous and rather odd.

Perhaps this is only connected to the earth in the plug and his way of adding some bonding in his bathroom. Presumably something has stopped working if it is actually providing power to something?

 

[sergeantash]

- There was a double socket in an extension, into one of the sockets was a mains plug attached to a very thin cable sheaved in earth sheaving, I commented that I didn't like the look of it and so we immediately unplugged it. We traced the wire as far as we could and it led to the bathroom at the end of the extension, it ran under the bath and disappeared somewhere near the sink. Whatever the previous owner was thinking, this sounds dangerous and rather odd.

Perhaps this is only connected to the earth in the plug and his way of adding some bonding in his bathroom. Presumably something has stopped working if it is actually providing power to something?

Whoops, sorry, I have just edited my original post as I missed off the important fact that there was only a single conductor within the earth sheaving which was attached to the earth pin inside the plug.

 

[333rocky333]

Im quessing the earth is something to do with his diy radio set up, as far as i know they get a bit paranoid about there earthing
Ericmark is the man here regarding that stuff

 

[Iggifer]

Yea so presumably it was his attempted at providing supplementary bonding.

Genius /s

 

[sergeantash]

Interesting! Thanks for the replies, I'll hopefully hear back from my friend this week and will ask about what the electrician said!

In the meantime, would you recommend that the cable be left unplugged?

 

[Iggifer]

If it was for supplementary bonding, then as long as the main bonding is fine, he doesn't need it.

And I would definitely leave it unplugged. If it is bonded to pipework, picture this, somebody trips on the cable, it pulls the cable from the earth plug and it comes into contact with the Live, then somebody turns on a tap?!

(highly) Unlikely I know, but it's just safer to leave it out

 

[sergeantash]

If it was for supplementary bonding, then as long as the main bonding is fine, he doesn't need it.

And I would definitely leave it unplugged. If it is bonded to pipework, picture this, somebody trips on the cable, it pulls the cable from the earth plug and it comes into contact with the Live, then somebody turns on a tap?!

(highly) Unlikely I know, but it's just safer to leave it out

He's very clumsy...so you never know

Thanks for the advice. I'll feedback as/when I hear more!

 

[RF Lighting]

If it was for supplementary bonding, then as long as the main bonding is fine, he doesn't need it.

And I would definitely leave it unplugged. If it is bonded to pipework, picture this, somebody trips on the cable, it pulls the cable from the earth plug and it comes into contact with the Live, then somebody turns on a tap?!

(highly) Unlikely I know, but it's just safer to leave it out

I'd definately leave it plugged in until it can be determined for sure what it's doing. It might be supplying an earth to another circuit or even the socket it's self for all we know.

 

[Iggifer]

That's a very good point, but disappearing into a bathroom? That would be my primary concern.

Perhaps remove the live pin from the plug? I don't know if that would actually make it much safer, I've never thought about plugging in a plug with only 2 pins before. Could even go the whole hog and remove both L+N pins but I would be worried about stability

 

[RF Lighting]

Or just leave it be for now as an electrician is coming to look.

Could be earthing one of those electric over door heaters heaters with the orange elements which is fed from a class 2 lighting circuit

 

[Iggifer]

Yea I'm being dense. Just leave it plugged in and switch the socket off! Will maintain earth but break L+N

 

[333rocky333]

If it was for supplementary bonding, then as long as the main bonding is fine, he doesn't need it.

You sure about that

 

[RF Lighting]

 

[sergeantash]

Or just leave it be for now as an electrician is coming to look.

Could be earthing one of those electric over door heaters heaters with the orange elements which is fed from a class 2 lighting circuit

They do have one of those in the room, but this cable doesn't lead to it, I would have liked to have delved deeper to check but didn't get chance.

I'll ask him to plug it back in for the meantime, lets hope the sparky has a good look around this week, I'll report back and thanks all for your help.