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Are you feeling grounded? It is an important question. Being grounded keeps the bad feelings away, you know those warm fuzzy feelings you get from an overdose of electrons that are all excited and nowhere to go.
Electrons like to go home to their mother, mother earth that is, and in their enthusiasm can be a little destructive on the way. Rather like football hooligans on a train their behaviour can be a bit shocking at times and they might even set fire to things.
The answer is to give them a safe way home if they get a bit out of hand.
A couple of months ago I was plugging a monitor into a computer. The tingling sensation on the outside of the cabinet gave me a warning of the shock that soon followed when I touched the monitor socket. It livened my conversation up somewhat.
This is all too common a problem here in paradise where many electricians and computer technicians learned their trade selling watches on the beach.
Your protection from their skills (or lack thereof) is the “earth” or “ground” for the electrical system in your house electrical circuits. Unfortunately the earth provides protection for what might happen in the future and as such is not considered important by local people who have a tendency to live in the moment.
The strict rules of electrical installation insist that appliances such as washing machines, toasters, computers and the like have their metal frameworks and steel cases earthed. Their power cables should have three wires: “live” which used to be red but these days is brown, “neutral” which used to be black and these days is blue and earth which used to be green but now is green and yellow striped.
The colours were changed when it was found that one or two too many colour blind electricians were connecting the green earth wire to the live turning a washing machine into a death trap. In Indonesia you will find that the old red and black wires are still often used.
The live and neutral wires carry the power while the earth is the electrons escape route to mum.
In most house wiring, the lighting circuits have only the live and neutral wires while plug sockets, ceiling fans and air conditioners have all three.
The earth wires come from each plug socket and connect back to your house distribution board, that's the one with all the “electrocutus interruptus” circuit breakers in it. Here the earth wires are connected together and in turn are, or should be, connected via a cable to a metal rod which is driven into the ground. The metal rod may be steel or ideally copper or copper coated and should be over a metre long.
Circuit breakers have replaced the old fuses. Remember those? They were those little glass tubes with a fine wire inside or, before that, a piece of thin wire connected between two terminals in the fuse box. If something accidentally got connected to earth, such as you touching a live wire, the electrons would make a dash for earth causing a surge in current that, if it went through you, could burn or kill you. The surge in current would melt the fuse wire hence cutting off the power supply. Fuse wire was used for generations but was replaced many years ago by circuit breakers which are far more effective.
Circuit breakers, locally called “stop kontak”, are more correctly called “earth leakage detectors” and are far more sensitive than the old fuses. They have a rating of usually 6, 10, or 16 amps, which is marked on the breaker just above the switch. This is the electrical current that the detector is rated to normally allow.
If the electrons break loose the breaker detects a surge in power and immediately switches off. They work extremely fast, faster than it take to say “Flipping Heck that hurts!” faster even than an Aussie offered a free beer at a footy match. This is because electrons move pretty fast when they get excited, you'd have trouble catching one I'll tell you.
The result is that you live to tell the tale and your house doesn't burn down.
There is, however, one unfortunate snag. Earth leakage detectors don't work properly if the distribution board is not earthed. In Bali you will find that many houses are not properly earthed.
I recently inspected some professionally built villas. The electrical systems look well installed using good materials but when I looked in the distribution box the earth cables were hanging loose, none of them had been connected and an earth cable had not been installed.
You will also find that if you use low cost plug sockets, plug boards or plugs themselves they may not have earth connections in them. You should check this. Have a look at all your plugs, and particularly plug boards, they should have two pins or holes for the live and neutral power and then two metal strips down the outside which engage with metal strips in the plug or socket. If either the plug or the socket don't have earthing connections then they are not earthed. This is alright on an appliance such as a hair dryer with a plastic body but things like washing machines and computers should always have an earth.
Lightning conductors also need to be earthed properly. Most houses don't have such things but if you have a house in a high position you may consider one. A copper spike on the roof connected by a substantial copper ribbon to a heavy duty earth rod. If lightning strikes the copper provides a safe path to earth protecting your building from what could be substantial damage.
A friend recently reported climbing onto his roof and finding that his internet dish had been bolted to his lightning conductor. To make matters worse the top of the dish was installed higher than the conductor. He rang the well known company that provide the internet service and they told him they usually bolt the dish to the lightning conductor.
Not a good idea.
At the highest point of your house you have a metal dish connected to your computer which in turn is connected to earth. In the highly unlikely event of a lightning striking your house you may have twenty million billion trillion electrons all heading home to mum through your computer and Windows doesn't come with a lightning conducting programme.
You could go into Google and do a search for a driver for your lightning conductor but I suspect you may have trouble finding one.
A better idea is to avoid using “Lightning Internet Services” even if they do promise fast download speeds.
So to summarise, check that your house has an earth connection, that the plug sockets are all properly earthed and that your computer is not connected to Benjamin Franklin’s kite.
Phil Wilson
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