Bonding

[endecotp]

I would like to think that maybe someone has created a nice simple document, with some diagrams, and maybe a flowchart, to help people including plumbers work out where bonding / supplementary bonding / etc. is needed. I haven’t found one, and everything from the IET looks like it’s deliberately hard to understand unless you’re already very familiar with their obtuse terminology.

On which subject, https://electrical.theiet.org/bs-76...g-regulations/faqs/earthing-and-bonding-faqs/ :

Can a gas engineer install protective bonding to gas pipework?

It’s unlikely that, unless specifically trained and experienced to do so, a gas engineer will have insufficient knowledge of electrical installations to carry out the work.

Which is nonsense. I think they probably meant “sufficient” not “insufficient”. Or what?

 

[JohnW2]

Which is nonsense. I think they probably meant “sufficient” not “insufficient”. Or what?

Quite so. Indeed, whichever they meant it would be too much of an inappropriate 'generalisation' to be useful.

In any event, if would take very very little "specific training and experience" for anyone (gas engineer, road sweeper or whatever) to be able to "carry out the work" (connect a bit of wire to a pipe) - it's knowing whether it needs to be done which requires some knowledge/understanding!

 

[mikehammer69]

I think you’re saying that you believe gas and water underground supply pipes being plastic means that bonding is now more necessary than before when they were metal, right? If so - no, that’s exactly the wrong way around.

I would like to think that maybe someone has created a nice simple document, with some diagrams, and maybe a flowchart, to help people including plumbers work out where bonding / supplementary bonding / etc. is needed. I haven’t found one, and everything from the IET looks like it’s deliberately hard to understand unless you’re already very familiar with their obtuse terminology.

Personally, I’ve found plenty of unnecessary earth wires and also missing required bonding in the places that I’ve lived. It’s a widespread problem.

I don’t see how anyone can safely follow diagrams here without training and experience

 

[JohnW2]

I don’t see how anyone can safely follow diagrams here without training and experience

I have a reasonable degree of knowledge, 'skill' and,dare I say, 'competence' across what is probably a fairly unusually wide range of disciplines. However, I have only been formally 'trained, qualified and experienced' in a relatively small proportion of those disciplines, many of them having been 'self taught', usually by reading and doing things like 'looking at diagrams' (or, theses days, I suppose also videos!).

Conversely, I'm sure we've all seen examples of people who have been formally trained and qualified, with lots of 'experience' (often experience of doing this badly or incorrectly!) who are not really 'competent', or necessarily even safe, in what they do!

 

[mikehammer69]

Actually there is some precedent for non- qualified persons following a set of instructions

Smart meter installers if I recall have some training but are not qualified

 

[JohnW2]

Actually there is some precedent for non- qualified persons following a set of instructions ... Smart meter installers if I recall have some training but are not qualified

Of course.

It's incredibly common these days. Think of the millions of people in 'call centres' conversing with the public about a vast range of topics, oten about which they know little/nothing, purely on the basis of algorithm-driven menus that appear on their screens.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that there are increasingly few activities which today require the same sort of in-depth education and understanding that was essential in the past, largely because the world has become so technologically complex and advanced. People with very little formal education/training of any sort can be easily taught (often 'self-taught') how to press (or 'click on') a few buttons (a.k.a 'follow instructions') and thereby 'do' things of which they have no real understanding, and wouldn't have a clue (or ability) as to how to achieve 'themselves'.

... and that's not only in relation to 'intellectual' tasks. Every day, countless people undertake medical procedures, 'engineering' procedures (such as your meter installers) or whatever on the basis of a list of instructions as to how to undertake a specific, very circumscribed, task in relation to a discipline which, in general, they had very little formal training/qualification in. Even people who'make things' in factories merely follow a set of instructions about how to do something very specific.