Earthing and Bonding. What are they? - In a nutshell, earthing helps to reduce the risk of electric shock in the event of a fault on a circuit.
For example, your cooker has a fault and the electric is now flowing to the metal case of the cooker. If you were to touch it, you would get a shock (as you would become the path to earth!) luckily a correctly connected cooker should have earthing (AKA circuit protective conductor) which will deal with the fault current for you and trip out your circuit breaker or RCD.
There are two types of bonding - main bonding and supplementary. Both help prevent electric shock should you come into contact with metallic parts such as pipe work or structural metal.
By connecting bonding conductors between two or more particular metal parts (pipes, structural steel etc.), it reduces the potential voltage between them in the event of a fault.
Whenever we carry out electrical work at your property (regardless of how small a job) we always check your earthing and bonding arrangements are up to the required standard. This helps ensure that the system we are working on is safe for continued use.
Sometimes on installations the cables used for earthing and bonding are too small. This can affect how quickly your safety devices (circuit breaker, RCD or combined RCBO) operate or could even cause the earthing or bonding cable to melt and fail before the power is switched off.
This is why we check!
