On 13/02/2020 21:59, TimW wrote:
There was an ancient (1950s) steel pipe bringing mains water into my
house under the front room and then up in the cup'd under the stairs.
There there was a stop cock and it went into copper pipe and onto the
copper a large sleeved earth wire was connected with a tag on saying "Do
Not Remove".

The steel pipe was leaking so I have taken it all out and replaced with
blue plastic pipe. Was looking at the earth arrangement and wondering if
I need to earth the wiring in another way, into the ground or something,
or are we still earthed through the water in the plastic pipe out to the
outside world?


Depends

That may have been just bonding of the incoming metal water pipe. If so
there may be no need for it *if* you've now got all plastic. If not best
to attach the wire to where copper water pipe starts again to maintain
equipotential bonding. See

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/...g#Main_Bonding

OTOH it may be - if it's an old house - the water pipe was part of (or
even all of!) the earthing for all your wiring. If so you may need
something to take its place - and PDQ if it was all you had.

Best place to start is what sort of earthing you have

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php/Earthing_Types

If you aren't sure post links to some pictures.


--
Robin
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