Originally Posted by
cosy trav
Im an electrician ,
1st of all if anything is double insulated it doesnt need an earth . Hence the double insulation (2 squares ) .
2nd If you have a faulty appliance plugged in to a socket and touch anything metal E.G sink , pipes . If you have no earth coming in to the fuse box it will not blow a fuse as its an earth fault and you will get a shock .
If you get a multimeter and test between live and neutral you should get 200v or whatever the voltage is over there , you should also get 200v between live and earth (this shows the earth is workin ) if you get less than 200v live to earth then you have a faulty earth . also check between neutral and earth and you should get 0v .
Hope this helps .
there is some false info posted here but cosy trav has got it right!
you need to do an insulation resistance test (at the fuse board) between all lives and earth, neutral bar and earth, this will tell you where your earth is getting volts from!
im guessing its live to earth, as you say its 200v then you need to do it circuit by circuit
the neutral should not have any volts running through it, if it does then deffo not 200v! maybe 1 or 2.
get the electrician back to do an insulation reistance test to find where the earth is getting volts from, then get it sorted, make sure you have an earth path, then get an rcd put in, you cant have one otherwise it would trip as soon as your earth had any volts in it.