Earthing system

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Hi, moved into a fairly old house 1910-ish.

Being curious about these things, I was wondering which earthing system I have?

IMG_2639.png
The earth wires are on the left hand side.

They are as follows:
Light green/yellow upwards to electric digital meter
Light green/yellow down to the garage consumer unit
dark green up to the main consumer unit
dark green down, disappears under the floor

Thanks in advance
 
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Dark green is very old and likely to be undersized by modern standards. It may also have a poor connection point.

Your photo does not show what they are attached to. It's possible that one of them is connected to something on or near the incoming electricity supply.

look carefully at the meter backboard for a durable label and see what it says.

Most likely you have a Main Earthing Terminal, which is not clearly shown in your photo but appears to be an old screw; and the cables to your consumer units come here, and the cable from wherever your earth is supplied. The cable that goes into the floor might or might not be connected to a water pipe, a gas pipe, and/or an earth spike.

Having established that, you could get a better MET and some larger cables.

An earth block like this
ae235

is better than the screw you currently have. It has ample capacity for multiple cables, each of them gripped by two good screws, and any one can be added or removed without disturbing the others. It can accept a 16mm cable which is the largest you are likely to need, and several 10mm which are likely to be correct for the main bonds for your incoming metallic services such as water, gas and oil pipes. Your house is old so it may have lead waste or iron soil pipes entering the bathroom from outside.

When connecting or disconnecting earth or bonding wires, do not touch the metal core or the earth terminal, because it is possible that there may be a voltage between them. The point of bonding them all together is that once fixed, there can be no voltage between them so they are safe to touch.

These earth clamps
ae235

are used for bonding to metal pipes (but not, please, the armour on a mains cable) and have a very useful durable identification label. The ones I show are corrosion resistant.
 
Thanks for your replies, very helpful. I will look into replacing the MET. I have taken a closer photo from a slightly different angle. This reveals there is another earth I couldn't see before, that looks quite chunky - presumably from the supply:

IMG_2643.jpg
Number 1: appears to go to the main incoming supply
2: consumer unit
3: under floor, possible pipe? needs investigating
4: garage consumer unit
5: electric meter
 
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you really need to photograph where each of those wires is attached at its other end.
 
From what I can see, the bigger bare piece of earth could possibly go into or just below the chamber of the cutout and be sweated onto the lead sheath thus providing the earth and the supply being a TNS system- very old cutouts sometimes have earth wires joined on like this.
Your best bet would to have your DNO come out and do a proper check for you
 
Looks like thee is something lugged to one of the set screws on the cutout, Top, left hand side, just below the fuse carrier. Would need a better pic to confirm.

Looks like TNS, but whether its still true TNS is anyones guess, likely not but its still SNE into the building, so you tick TNS on page 2 as you don't have any information to tell you its not, can't treat as TNS for EV charging though...
 
Looks like thee is something lugged to one of the set screws on the cutout, Top, left hand side, just below the fuse carrier. Would need a better pic to confirm.
It appears that there is - but seemingly only a small and flimsy bit of braiding ...

upload_2020-12-1_23-39-39.png


Kind Regards, John
 
Thanks for all your replies, it's super helpful, I will endeavour to get the DNO out to check things out.

Interesting that you mention EV charging @Adam_151 , as that's what got me looking at this in the first place. As many of the charging connectors are lacking in in-built protection I was looking at something like this to cover all bases, so to speak but wanted to see what earthing system I was dealing with.
Screenshot 2020-12-01 at 11.00.14.png
 
IMG_2651.jpg
This is where no.2 goes, to the main consumer unit

IMG_2652.jpg
This is no5, to the economy 7 meter
IMG_2654.jpg
No. 1 - This goes to the main incoming cable, comes out of the wrapped incoming cable.

The one going below the floorboards (3) I can't get to at the moment. No. 4 follows the SWA cable to the garage consumer unit.
 
can't make out no. 1. Is it pushed under the bandage round the incoming cable?
 

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