Earthing electrical items????

[Jenny1960]

Please excuse me in advance if this is a stupid question....

I have a spare security light that I would like to fit to the exterior of our villa. Looking at the instructions, it clearly states "This light MUST be earthed"
A friend told me that Spain does not 'earth' electrical items??
Does this render it useless for Spain?

Thanks for any help,

Jenny

[El Cid]

No, it will work.

In Spain all installations are protected with an earth trip so normal earthing on simple appliances is not required.

Sid

[Jenny1960]

Thats great Cid, thank you

[ajtg1952]

If you look at a Spanish plug the 2 silver metalic strips on the outside are the earth. I cannot believe someone would tell you that Spain does not have an earth.

What Sid says is not entirely true. Not all installations have earth leak detection systems. Modern one do but not all old systems have this. Small appliances are usually double insulated and have no earth.

Outside lights MUST be earthed.

[Beachcomber]

If it has a metal casing the mere fact of screwing it to the wall will provide an earth of sorts. Otherwise you could take a cable from the earth connection inside the light fitting and screw the other end firmly into the wall.

If it is a security light it should be sufficiently high to prevent it from being reached from the ground anyway. The only person likely to touch it would be a prospective burglar who may get electrocuted when trying to extinguish it but... so what?

[ajtg1952]

That will be a screw probably into a plastic plug; yes that will work, not.

[Beachcomber]

It would obviously be a screw into a metal expanding plug or the cable wrapped around the outside of a plastic plug so that it makes contact with the brick work. It may not be the ideal answer but if the supply to the lamp has no earth there is really no alternative apart from not fitting it at all.

[Jenny1960]

ajgt I obviously misunderstood what my friend was talking about, she obviously meant just small appliances not being earthed however,
Thank you all for your input, much appreciated.

[ajtg1952]

When you wire an electrical appliance and make a mistake with the live or neutral, the appliance may not work. Make a mistake with the earth and you may die.

What your are suggesting, Beachcomber, is totally irresponsible and downright dangerous.

[Beachcomber]

We are talking about a security light which, once installed, will be out of reach.

Your assertion that making an error with phase and neutral may just mean that the appliance will not work is totally wrong and far more dangerous. The appliance will always work but if it is switched on and off by means of a single pole switch which happens to be in the neutral line it means that a bedside light, for example, will still be live even when it is switched off.

[ajtg1952]

You have substituted may for will. In Spain the plug can go in either way so the switch can remain live. That is a weakness with the continental system.

A security light, no matter how out of the way it is, may need maintenance. I stand by my previous comments.

[Beachcomber]

Both installation and maintenance would obviously be carried out with the power off. Given the choices I would rather have a security light than not. I could not imagine a situation where one would be installed less than at least two metres from the ground.

The old type earthed Spanish plug could not be plugged in the wrong way round. Given the myriad of regulations concerning electricity installations in Europe generally and Spain in particular I am aghast that 'a weakness with the continental system' allows the use of the unfused round plugs that can easily be plugged in the wrong way round and, furthermore, have no isolating switch. I maintain that this is far more dangerous than having an unearthed outside security light.

I have marked all of my sockets with a dab of red nail varnish showing which hole is the phase and have marked every plug accordingly and where I have been unable to confirm which is the phase I have cut off the moulded plug and replaced it with a normal one so that I know which pole is which.

I have made it patently clear to both my wife and the cleaner (as well as the very occasional visitor) that if anything is unplugged for any reason it must be plugged back in according to my markings.

[ajtg1952]

I'm tired with this now. You believe what you want to believe; I just hope nobody follows your advice.

[markwilding]

This something where I'm a complete novice but there are two things I would like to add .
Do we still need to put plugs on anything these days as the law states that every appliance must have a moulded one already on it?
And isn't everything fused at the fuse box as opposed on the plug itself?

[Martin Page]

Tired or not AJTG .. Some earth is better than no earth. If the guy wants a lamp up for security and has no alternative, Beach has just given him an option. Right or wrong he has still given the guy an option.
I would do exactly what beach suggests .. what would you do .. don't put the light up ?

I'm on single phase with a defined earth, three in fact, since I've resorted to adding an additional earth pole for this specific plug for the computer so the surge protector can 'bleed' if required.
However there is still 7v reading from the computer case and the grout between the floor tiles - riddle me that ? and an ELCB on the metre

[ajtg1952]

An effective earth is a wire going to an earthing terminal in the consumer unit. The consumer unit is either earthed back to the transformer or to an earthing rod.

An earthing rod is 1m of 15mm copper bar driven into the ground. It us not a no. 6 screw in a tile brick wall.

[knowal]

Well said AJTG1952.

Safety is paramount with electrical work. There should not be any short cuts.

[Beachcomber]

It is incredulous that there should be such agonising over the rights and wrongs of the method of earthing an inaccessible outside security light whilst the infinitely more dangerous practice of being able to transpose at will the phase and neutral of every day household appliances is nonchalantly dismissed as being 'a weakness with the continental system'.

[knowal]

True Beachcomber, some can be quite dismissing over neutral/live issues.
I had an extension built in 1998 and found that all the lights were switched in the neutral line.
When I complained that the lamp holders were still live with the switch in the off position, I got the usual shoulder shrug. However, they did admit it was wrong and they rectified it by swapping wires in the supply junction box.

When I had a lamp that needed an earth, I fed a new earth wire through the conduit from the nearest junction box. It's not too difficult with the right tools.

[AkoAko]

No, it will work.

In Spain all installations are protected with an earth trip so normal earthing on simple appliances is not required.

Sid

I know that this is a very old post but as Sid is still very much alive and kicking i thought i would ask hi to elaborate more on this statement . My property had no earth cable in the circuit at all , everything else is wired to a high standard and correctly but for some reason theres no earth and looking at the route it simply wouldn't be possible to add one theres no way a cable could be puller through