"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...

Where we are the PME earth is so
far above real earth you daren't trust it and have to convert back.

What sort of voltage difference are you talking about?
The supplier is required to ground the PEN (Protective earth and
neutral) conductor within some fairly short distance from your
house (like 60m, but can't recall for sure). Any significant
PEN to ground voltage would indicate a supply fault.

It is(was) about 45 volts, varying throughout the day. The earth is at
least half a mile away, I can see it dangling down the side of the pole
which feeds another farm first. Problem is when the last farm (of five) on
the chain runs a heavy load the earth really moves.

A while back we had a small water leak from the bottom of our hot water tank
which sits just above a stone floor. Shouldn't have been a problem to fix
but one couldn't touch it without getting a small shock due to the wet floor
and of course there is no 'off' switch for ground so we had to wait for the
whole thing to drain into the ground before we could deal with the leak.

Went off PME big time then and installed my own earth rods.