Another funny from the AMD 2 draft for comment - bathrooms, arms are getting shorter.

You might want to skip through to find the part where a hairdryer is thrown into the water in the bath.

 

At about 20 min I think

BUT - why is the Ground Fault Interruptor working, and in one of the cases I cited the RCD didn't trip?


Well - they are using a metal drain in the example.


Unfortunately for the vast majority of us, we have plastic baths with plastic drains ... so in this particular case, there's no "residual current" in Class II appliances, because there's no protective earth circuit for current to travel back up ... it all returns through the Neutral, "fooling" the RCD. Very different, when you're suspended in a plastic bath with plastic pipes, to normal the Class II appliance situation, where if you touch a live conductor it flows through your feet or anything else you're touching.


The L-N current through salt water may not cause operation of an overcurrent protective device due to L-N short (this was demonstrated in the YouTube video) ...  but the electric field can travel from L and N to the heart ...

I think we can all agree that if you must throw an appliance into the bathwater it should be class I and supplied via an RCD, or the bath water should be earthed (?)-  as in the days of the 15th edition, cast iron baths and so forth, it probably was - just a pity there were not so many RCDs back then.

However, the wider exam question for considering the regs is if you provide sockets in bathrooms do accidents in the house become more or less common ?

Now for those folk trailing a fan heater in on an extension lead (and we used to do it chez PJ before we got central heating and new windows)  the addition of a fixed socket may or may not make things safer, as yes the electricity is closer to the bath tub, but  now you have some control over where the plug and socket actually are, and maybe eliminate a trip hazard in the hallway outside.

I suspect if people are hell-bent on doing something dangerous, you will struggle to stop them, but as in kitchens, where water and electrics get close (as well as other risks like heat and knives), but there is probably less exposed skin, most folk around the planet seem to be able to manage. I remember looking at fire and accident stats for the UK way back when Part P first came in, and realising we have (or had in the early 2000s) a very similar no. of exploding hairdryer accidents to Germany, just ours occurred in bedrooms rather than bathrooms.

Now if sockets in bathrooms become slightly more common than they already are, then  it may be that folk need enough education to realise that water and electricity should be kept apart, though personally I see this change as adding no real risk.

I keep using an extension lead into the bathroom for my beard razor (Wahl) which may sound dangerous but really isn't. A razor socket is not really powerful enough, anyway I didn't fit one and it is now difficult. So far I haven't died so I suggest others try it.

Electric fan heaters in bathrooms are not a problem, if you screw them to a wall in an appropriate position.

For comparison here is a guide in which   les rules Francais    are explained.

And  the German  equivalent . Some knowledge of Foreign languages required !!

Both allow sockets anywhere outside Z2 that is not likely to get wet.

They have the same tiles in the second photo as I put on three walls in our bathroom, the stone effect tiles didn't have take some work to grout using a grout gun. The other walls I used plain white tiles to make it easy to clean around the shower.


I made a point of putting the shaver socket on flat plain white tiles, much more pleasing to the eye than the socket in that photo with the tiles cut around it and I could use a plain white fitting sitting on the surface of the tiles that just merges into its background.


The lack of a 13-amp plug socket in the bathroom is not an issue as my wife dries her hair at her dressing table and the bathroom radio is actually the solar rechargeable digital radio I bought for work, it never went back into the van after I finished the bathroom, so there's not really anything I feel I need to plug in that I cannot.