Plumbing earth bonding

[DanMcLiverpool]

Disclaimer: I'm not going to attempt this job myself, I want a professional to do this job properly since I consider it non-trivial and need it safe as poss. The reason I'm posting it in DIY is because I want to understand it properly.

I believe our plumbing is not bonded/earthed. Quite clear to see - the pipes under the boiler are next to the consumer unit, and there's an earth cable there that's been snipped at both ends (it's just pinned to the wall).

My understanding (limited) is that the pipes are metal, if some wire should come lose which somehow makes contact with any point of the piping, the whole house's plumbing could become live.

Questions:

• Is my understanding correct?
• How have people known this was missing (to leave me the warning card)? Certain people have been out that I'm not sure have seen inside (i.e. to service the electric box outside) but somehow knew it wasn't earthed?
• Assume we bond/earth the pipes to the consumer unit (as it looked like it'd been previously), any live current connected to that piping we'll be protected from. But what about if there's plastic pipe elsewhere and then more metal piping elsewhere in the house that becomes live. It wouldn't protect us from that, would it? So isn't bonding these pipes only as effective as long as there's no break in the conductors somewhere? As an example: we earth the pipes under the boiler to the CU, then there's some plastic piping to some plumbing upstairs, however the upstairs becomes live - that's not earthed is it?

Please excuse the potentially silly question, but I'm in a DIY section here trying to understand it for safety's sake - I also want to ensure the electrician's doing a thorough job. I have these pipes near the CU, but I also have a stop cock hidden in the kitchen, and I have a 2 week old baby which has me on a big safety trip at the mo!

Thank you!

 

[littlespark]

Congrats on the new addition.


The bonding of copper pipework was commonplace many years ago, but now with plumbers using plastic fittings, incoming water mains pipe being plastic instead of metal… along with RCD protection is consumer units, the practice is no longer required.
In fact, bonding the pipework together can make things more dangerous.

Back in the day, we, as electricians were taught about EEBADS…. Which is Earthed Equipotential Bonding (join every pipe or bit of metal you can see) and Automatic Disconnection of Supply…. Which means the use of fuses, circuit breakers etc.

Now, it’s just ADS.

 

[DanMcLiverpool]

Congrats on the new addition.


The bonding of copper pipework was commonplace many years ago, but now with plumbers using plastic fittings, incoming water mains pipe being plastic instead of metal… along with RCD protection is consumer units, the practice is no longer required.
In fact, bonding the pipework together can make things more dangerous.

Back in the day, we, as electricians were taught about EEBADS…. Which is Earthed Equipotential Bonding (join every pipe or bit of metal you can see) and Automatic Disconnection of Supply…. Which means the use of fuses, circuit breakers etc.

Now, it’s just ADS.

Thanks mate!

I haven't been on this forum for a good while, and on my return see you're still being as helpful as ever to clueless DIY'ers like myself in this section. Nice one!

That was the 1 question I was missing! I was wondering how it was considered effective given the fact all of my circuits are RCD-protected, you answered that before I could even ask it!

Thanks again