Redundant protective equipotential bonding - how to deal with it?

A couple of weeks ago, we received a letter saying that the gas main in our road and the service pipes will be replaced by new plastic ones.

This morning, an engineer called, and after seeing our supply, he told me that the pipes are already plastic. The pipe is steel where it enters beside the meter, but I am told that it is metal only for the horizontal length which passes through the brickwork.

The water supply is very obviously plastic.

Despite the supplies being plastic, they are both bonded and there is extensive supplementary bonding.

The electrical installation appears to date from the early 1980s. Originally, there was RCD protection only on sockets which were likely to supply equipment outdoors. All RCBO DBs have been fitted and I have recently been moving some remaining circuits to the new boards.

That leaves the question as to what to do with the main protective equipotential bonding, which appears to be redundant because the supply pipes are not extraneous-conductive-parts. That aside, the RCBOs appear to make the supplementary bonding superfluous.

So, what do I do with it? I see no point in reconnecting it, but attempting to remove all of it would requireconsiderable effort.

Parents
  • This morning, an engineer called, and after seeing our supply, he told me that the pipes are already plastic.

    Another engineer called on Friday and said, "not necessarily", so they are going to have a look inside the pipe with a camera.

  • Plastic service pipe confirmed today. The contractors dug loads of little holes over the junctions using a rather noisy, but very effective suction excavator. Almost all of the service pipes in our street are plastic.

    What about install and Earth rod of Earth/ConduDisc ?  Then check the readings

    I had thought of detaching the main bonding and then measuring the gas supply's resistance to earth as if it were an earth electrode, but there may still be parallel paths because of all the supplementary bonding.

Reply
  • Plastic service pipe confirmed today. The contractors dug loads of little holes over the junctions using a rather noisy, but very effective suction excavator. Almost all of the service pipes in our street are plastic.

    What about install and Earth rod of Earth/ConduDisc ?  Then check the readings

    I had thought of detaching the main bonding and then measuring the gas supply's resistance to earth as if it were an earth electrode, but there may still be parallel paths because of all the supplementary bonding.

Children
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