On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:35:31 -0700, p.scott wrote:

Hey Folks,

I recently had to replace a ring main socket in a part of the house that
was re-wired 20+ years ago by an ex-electricity board inspector. I was
surprised to see that the earth connectors, instead of being wired into
the socket, were twisted together along with a flying earth and
connected to the earth connector in the metal box. The flying earth
alone went to the socket. None of the earths were sheathed!

Previously, I would have connected all three earth wires into the
socket. However, this unexpected configuration seems less likely to come
adrift because the three-wire collection goes into a fixed connector and
only a single wire goes to the socket. The three-wire collection only
needs disturbing if re-wiring is needed, not whenever a socket is
replaced.



That looks like a pretty well wired socket. You don't break the earth on
the ring while replacing a socket and the box has to be earthed anyway if
it's metal. It's actually how I was trained to wire sockets (by Norweb)
30-odd years ago. :-) The earth wires should really be sleeved though,
but this was often omitted if there was no chance of them touching live
or neutral connections on the back of the socket (it's mainly an
identification issue). You probably found that the ring earths were wired
first, at the back of the box.

--
Mick (Working in a M$-free zone!)
Web: http://www.nascom.info http://mixpix.batcave.net