Discuss job report: electric shocks from dishwasher in the Electrical Appliances Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

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stillblagginit

I attended the above issue on a domestic property (TNS supply) and discovered the socket supplying the dishwasher was introducing line voltage to the earth connection. This was supplied by a fused switch spur located above the kitchen worktop which had no earth supply to it. This same fuse spur was fixed to a dual metal back box which also fixed another f/spur that served a m/w.
The earth supply was installed to an insulated connector and only connected the m/w. once I connected the earth as it should be to both f/spurs the fault disappeared with no tripping of the (healthy) rcd, which by the way never triggered initially. ...any ideas any one?
 
I attended the above issue on a domestic property (TNS supply) and discovered the socket supplying the dishwasher was introducing line voltage to the earth connection. This was supplied by a fused switch spur located above the kitchen worktop which had no earth supply to it. This same fuse spur was fixed to a dual metal back box which also fixed another f/spur that served a m/w.
The earth supply was installed to an insulated connector and only connected the m/w. once I connected the earth as it should be to both f/spurs the fault disappeared with no tripping of the (healthy) rcd, which by the way never triggered initially. ...any ideas any one?
yeah...kev kitchen strikes again....
got all the hallmarks of `im does this....
 
probably the current causing shock was insufficient to trip RCD. maybe next time would not have been so lucky. nice one for sorting it. :wink_smile:
 
Cheers both. The only conclusion I have is that somehow there must have been some earth leakage within the poorly connected dual metal clad box. I'm guessing perhaps that once I reconnected both fuse spur units I must have cleared the fault unintentionally. On my final checks Both the socket tester proved a healthy connection and polarity, the zs reading came in at 0.45 ohms and the rcd test tripped nicely at 26ms on a 30ma rcd test.
...It's just difficult to explain to the client who asked why it would do this all of a sudden after so many years of seemingly working fine. And it still boggles me that the alleged spark who installed this (about 8 years ago) didn't connect the earth to the dishwasher socket!!
 
Any appliance like a washing machine or microwave will have a small leakage current. This is normally drained to earth if connected correctly. It won’t be enough to trip a RCB, but you will feel it.
 
Hi Tony,
Thanks for your reply.
I completely agree with you regards appliances having small earth leakage. However I still had the fault even after unplugging the dishwasher. This showed up on my socket tester indicating a live earth to the socket.
...Had me scratching my head for a while as I couldn't see any live wires at the fuse spur physically touching the metal box etc. (the visual inspection done with the power off).
I guess I may have unintentionally broken this insidious connection when I reconnected both fuse spurs as they should have been.
 
Only last week I came across an 'extended ring' in a fairly recently installed kitchen - existing ring cut [behind a base unit] new 'mini ring' from this position to 2 x new double sockets- then all 4 2.5 T and E cables and a 5th to a spur were connected together into the ONE 30a JB !! There wasn't one outer cable sheath made it into the box and they had caused an intermittent N/E fault due to no CPC sleeving at all and one CPC hanging out within the box right by the neutral terminal, this took some finding ! :yesnod:
 

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