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There was a regulation change about 10 years ago which requires the main water and gas pipes to be bonded with a pretty chunky cable to the consumer unit. This has to be done within a short distance from their entry to the property. It's a pretty big deal for a lot of consumer unit upgrades because the utilities often enter the building a long way from the consumer unit and 10mm earth is not easy to hide. Hard to say what the bonding you have there is if it's not the main equipotential bonding but the installer might just hang one on there anyway because the joke is plumbers have no idea what equipotential bonding is anyway and they certainly can't spell it!
Apologies to plumbers of the forum who are undoubtably exceptions to this and will know that equipotential bonding exists to ensure that during an earth fault exposed metalwork will be at the same voltage as the earth and will act as an earth path thereby decreasing the time for the breaker to operate.
There's a great description of it on page 39-40 of this months professional electrician magazine. :-
https://professional-electrician.com/magazines/october-2023/
Airhead-
Okay thanks a lot for the explanation. I've reached out to the gas engineer that installed that pipe to ask if that was done or is needed. Is this typically more likely to sit with an electrician?
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Apologies to plumbers of the forum who are undoubtably exceptions to this and will know that equipotential bonding exists to ensure that during an earth fault exposed metalwork will be at the same voltage as the earth and will act as an earth path thereby decreasing the time for the breaker to operate.
There's a great description of it on page 39-40 of this months professional electrician magazine. :-
https://professional-electrician.com/magazines/october-2023/
I read this like an HIGNFY answer.
M4xime
NotThamesWater
Had an engineer sent by Ovo around yesterday to upgrade our gas meter as we'd lost the gas supply. As they left, they put this bit of paper on the gas pipe warning about a lack of main equipotential bonding.
However, having done a bit of reading etc I can this this installed within 600mm of the meter itself, isn't this the equipotential bonding? I know nothing about this topic so would appreciate some help.