Testing Earth

[ADE140]

I had to fit a new double socket front onto an existing double socket as the old one was damaged, however the earth cable was very short with no slack, I managed to get the earth cable in the earth connecting hole and do the screw up tight, but as it was so tight to the wall I can not confirm 100 percent that the connection was good,

Is there anyway of checking the earth connection is safe whilst the front panel is screwed to the wall

 

[Big_Spark]

Plug in socket tester..that will tell you if everything is hunky-dorey or not.

Try this LINK

 

[plugwash]

socket testers won't tell you if you have a good earth (they can't really because what constitues an acceptable earth depends on the earthing system) or not only that there is some form of connection to earth.

best simple test you could do would be to measure the resistance between the earth terminal on that socket and the one on another socket nearby. Unfortunately most multimeters aren't very accurate at those kind of values.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

socket testers won't tell you if you have a good earth (they can't really because what constitues an acceptable earth depends on the earthing system) or not only that there is some form of connection to earth.

 

[JohnD]

When I was working for Eastern Electricity (not as an electrician) one of their safety bulletins forbade their workers from using plug-in testers, after one failed to detect that the P&N had been crossed over at the incoming service.

It may have been at a country property with an overhead supply, we had lots of them, I can't remember.

 

[Adam_151]

Sometimes you can get faults which produce interesting results on those testers, imagine a distrubution board, a device is connected to phase on another distribution board and borrows a neutral on one of the circuits on the distrubution board we are talking about, if you switch off the distrubution board in question, and plug in one of those testers on a socket supplied by it, the results can be quite confusing, think it shows up as phase/earth reversal

 

[andy]

socket testers won't tell you if you have a good earth (they can't really because what constitues an acceptable earth depends on the earthing system) or not only that there is some form of connection to earth.

wont tell you if the earth is only hangin on by a strand or very thin bit of cable

 

[plugwash]

socket testers won't tell you if you have a good earth (they can't really because what constitues an acceptable earth depends on the earthing system) or not only that there is some form of connection to earth.

nice, never seen one of those before but my point still stands with regards to most socket testers including the one on ebay that was linked.

 

[plugwash]

Sometimes you can get faults which produce interesting results on those testers, imagine a distrubution board, a device is connected to phase on another distribution board and borrows a neutral on one of the circuits on the distrubution board we are talking about, if you switch off the distrubution board in question, and plug in one of those testers on a socket supplied by it, the results can be quite confusing, think it shows up as phase/earth reversal

yep that would figure because live and neutral would both beome live through the borrowed neutral whilst earth would remain at earth. this is elecrtically indistinguisable from a phase-earth reversal.

 

[Big_Spark]

Well bright sparks, short of taking off the bloody faceplate, which would defeat the object, perhaps you would like to inform the ENTIRE electrical contracting industry of Planet Earth which test will show how well his earth is connected..

Oh I forgot..THERE ISN'T ONE

The only check to do this is visual, and if you all bother to read ther original post then you will see that he cannot do a visual without disconnecting the faceplate...

A socket tester is perfectly acceptable and people who dis them don't know what they are talking about. They are not a substitute for proper testing I grant you, but they do show basic faults, such as reversed polarity, missing Phase, Missing Neutral, Missing Earth etc etc..

 

[PompeySparks]

An EFLI test from the socket is the best way to determine the state of the earthing, although admittedly as others have said, it's not conclusive!