You Have Some Earth But Not Enough
When you buy a house for sale in Spain you often get yourself some quite unique issues, some would say problems. One of those specific issues is the electricity thing.
Spanish Electrical Shock
What is the electricity thing? Well you often get electric shocks in Spanish houses and flats. Small ones and sometimes a bit bigger ones that can make your hair stand up like Tom just after Jerry has plugged his tail into the mains.
The thing is there is an issue of Earthing applicances. As you can imagine this can be an issue in a flat but it shouldn’t be such a problem in houses should it? Well I remember many years ago an electrician was called to a friend’s house because they were getting constant electric shocks from their appliances and he got an “Only in Spain” answer as to why it was happening.
“You have some Earth but not enough”
“Pardon me”
You need some more Earth. The best way to do it is to water your patio and garden regularly and this will give you a bit more Earth”
“OK”
Now it may sound strange but it worked on two levels. Firstly the electric shocks became milder. Secondly the garden plants had a new lease of life.
The problem was asked to me by a client last week who lives in a fourth floor flat in Valencia. I stopped short of suggesting making the flat into a jacuzzi, at least on a temporary basis, but I was wondering whether anyone knows of a good solution for Earthing appliances a bit better in a flat. I would be interested to know.
We have the opposite problem in our flat, I think. We don’t have enough electricity for the millions of gadgets that we run. Certain combos of high-consumption devices (grill, oven, heater 1, heater 2) will trip the supply. Pain in the butt, it is.
Our supply trips at times too but this is the best house I have ever lived in Spain because it doesn’t happen just on turning on the kettle along with the microwave
I don’t have a solution, but I loved this:
“Firstly the electric shocks became milder. Secondly the garden plants had a new lease of life.”
David
I’ll try to keep this as non-technical as possible.
1. Circuits breakers trip because they are designed to protect the wiring from melting on overload and causing fires. For example a 13Amp breaker will trip when the total current flowing in the circuit exceeds 13A. A typical kettle can draw around 10A at switch on and a microwave oven can draw 6A, clearly then, 16A will cause the breaker to trip. The solution is to increase the current rating of the breaker but only if the wiring can handle the higher current safely, this is CRUCIAL! Older properties were built when the increase in appliances wasn’t foreseen and the wiring is inadequate for modern use. In new properties, there is no excuse – the house was built down to a price, not up to a standard, more current means thicker conductors are required which are more expensive than thin ones.
2. Shocks are caused because the victim is touching something “live” with a part of their body and are touching ground(earth) with another part. First thing to notice is, NO part of anything
electrical that can be held or touched should be live! Find out if it is wired correctly, most likely it isn’t. There are other causes of shock which are taken care of by the fitting of RCD’s
(Residual Current Devices) normally located in the electrical consumer unit. I don’t know the electrical standards in Spain so perhaps these are not fitted.
3. A word on “earthing”. The basic requirements for a circuit are two conductors, neutral and live, technically, an earth wire is not required but it’s a highly important safety measure used to to prevent shock. It does this by conducting current to ground in the event of a fault or incorrect wiring. It is essential that the earth connection has a very low electrical resistance. This can be achieved by driving a copper spike a meter or so long into the ground and connecting it to the earthing point at the electrical entry point of the building. In the UK earthing is often carried out by connecting the earth conductor to main water pipes which are made of copper and already buried. Incidentally, those of you who water your “earth” would do much better by using salty water which is a much better conductor than fresh water.
MORE IMPORTANTLY THOUGH, get your appliances sorted out, if your being shocked by them something is wrong and not just with your earth! There is one further possibility; if your appliance is working and wired correctly and you still get shocked it could be that static electricity is the culprit. For example, if a kettle whose metal body is correctly connected to a good earth then it is not be possible to get a shock by touching it. If you find the shocks happen randomly or only occasionally then static is a possible cause. If you wear shoes of an insulating material or even stand barefoot on an insulating floor, your body can carry a static charge of hundreds of thousands of volts without you being aware of it until you touch something that provides a path to ground, “ouch”! This is more likely to happen in very dry climatic conditions, humidity prevents static build-up.
And that wasn’t technical George
Well, it would’ve been much less wordy had I explained things with examples using Ohms Law equations but that might have got me banned from commenting for life!