Last night after work we went to a supermarket to collect our weeks food order for us, my dad and mother in law, so we were at the shed around the back and I got out of the car to go to stand by a supermarket delivery van to distance myself. The van was parked and plugged into the mains with a flex to keep the fridge and freezer running, I'm eyeing the box on the wall up and noting that there was not an obvious earth rod and wondered what the risks of leaning against the van would be.


Having returned home, with a fish and chips, I went out again to take my Dad his food then returned a hour or so later to find my wife half way through a TV programme, so I put a JW YouTube video on that had popped up a couple of days ago, about tool isolation transformers. JW sketched out the earth free arrangement on the output that I understood to be the case, the videos kept rolling and the next one was an American guy discussing if bench top isolation transformers being sold were actually earth free and by now the general drift was towards avoiding blowing up an oscilloscope whilst bench testing, but he had rigged up experiment with an RCD upfront and downstream of the isolation transformer, but I cannot tell you what happened, because I went to sleep without finishing my bottle of beer.


My understanding was that tool isolation transformers are really intended to supply one tool, preferably a double insulated tool without a long extension lead to work safely without an RCD, so do they take the earth through or not?


Even if they do a RCD cannot work downstream of them.

 

Last night after work we went to a supermarket to collect our weeks food order for us, my dad and mother in law, so we were at the shed around the back and I got out of the car to go to stand by a supermarket delivery van to distance myself. The van was parked and plugged into the mains with a flex to keep the fridge and freezer running, I'm eyeing the box on the wall up and noting that there was not an obvious earth rod and wondered what the risks of leaning against the van would be.


Having returned home, with a fish and chips, I went out again to take my Dad his food then returned a hour or so later to find my wife half way through a TV programme, so I put a JW YouTube video on that had popped up a couple of days ago, about tool isolation transformers. JW sketched out the earth free arrangement on the output that I understood to be the case, the videos kept rolling and the next one was an American guy discussing if bench top isolation transformers being sold were actually earth free and by now the general drift was towards avoiding blowing up an oscilloscope whilst bench testing, but he had rigged up experiment with an RCD upfront and downstream of the isolation transformer, but I cannot tell you what happened, because I went to sleep without finishing my bottle of beer.


My understanding was that tool isolation transformers are really intended to supply one tool, preferably a double insulated tool without a long extension lead to work safely without an RCD, so do they take the earth through or not?


Even if they do a RCD cannot work downstream of them.