Main Earth Electrical Safety

Correct Earthing Is Vital For Electrical Safety

Hi, today I want to talk about the importance of correct earthing for the electrical safety of your home or business premises.  A good main earth is a vital safety feature, unfortunately it’s something that can be easily damaged or disconnected.  Your main earth connection is just a single green and yellow wire that’s connected to a copper stake that is hammered into the ground beside your house, usually close to the switchboard.

Have a look and see if you can find your main earth connection and make sure it hasn’t been damaged or chopped off by a whipper snipper or spade.  The other part of your earth system is the equipotential bond.  This is an earth wire connected to your metal plumbing pipes and it’s an additional electrical safety feature.

The equipotential bond is sometimes cut or removed during plumbing renovations when replacing pipes or replacing an old hot water cylinder.  If you feel any slight tingle when you touch a tap or a metal sink that’s a sign you have a problem with your equipotential bond and it’s something that should be looked at straight away.

Having a good main earth and a good earth connection to each individual light and power point in your home or office is very important for electrical safety.  It’s important to make sure your earthing system is in good condition and everything is working as it should.

If you can’t locate your earth stake or have any queries about the earthing on your property, please get in touch and arrange for a quick check to ensure your electrical installation is safe and correctly earthed.

Hot Tempered Roller Door Misbehaves

We were working for an organization who had moved into new premises that had been converted from a former heavy industrial site.   A lot of alterations and refurbishments were done by a number of different contractors.

They called us to say their electric roller door had stopped working and we scheduled to attend the job the following day.  On arrival the next morning the door and controls were tested and found to be operating perfectly.

 A couple of days later they called to say the door had failed to operate again.  Once again we arranged to attend the next morning and once again we found everything operating normally.

 The warehouse staff advised the problem had occurred a couple of times in the past, but seemed to be more frequent lately. The door would always work first thing of a morning, but would stop working at various times of the day, and then start working again later in the afternoon.

So, we organized to attend as soon as they next reported a problem with the door.  The very next afternoon we got the call to say the door had worked all morning but stopped around 1.30pm.

We sent our technician straight over and after a bit of testing and checking around he discovered the roller door controls had been wired into an old heater circuit and a thermostat had been left in the circuit.

The door would operate normally until the ambient temperature reached 20 degrees, at which point the thermostat would click out and cut power to the door.  The door worked fine every morning, but as soon as the late spring day warmed up and the temperature exceeded 20 degrees, the door would stop working.

 It was a simple job to fix it, but a bit of head scratching was required to find the intermittent fault.

If you have a strange electrical problem, give us a call and we’ll send one of our “Electric Detectives” to track down the problem.

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