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?

You have several possibilities here, ranging from mostly all ok, not
much to worry about, to, you now have seriously defective electrical
installation that will be a potential danger to life.

Needless to say, working out which is the first priority. :-)

The links Robin posted should help you identify the type of earthing
system you have. If it turns out to be one of the TN variants, then you
have not much to worry about. If its TT and the rising main was your
main earth connection, you need to take some immediate steps to make it
safe.


--
Cheers,

John.

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