Grounding the bath. Cabling and self-assembly

In the old days, it was not necessary to ground the house at all, but not now. For the bathroom, this issue is more relevant, since water is a good conductor of electricity. Have you ever felt that touching the electric objects: a washing machine, a hair dryer, and others, you felt a tingling sensation in your fingertips? Here is one more proof of how much grounding is needed. You can set up a bath ground yourself.

Let's start with the basics. What is called grounding? This is a protection that takes the current from the body of the electrical device and takes it to the ground. A sufficiently large number of devices are provided with metal grooves designed specifically for grounding.

Why is it so necessary to ground the bath? It's simple. Water perfectly conducts a current, so, in a bathroom there will always be a potential danger to collide with action of an electricity. And given that the bathroom has a lot of metal pipes and various products in combination with high humidity, it is necessary to ensure proper grounding to avoid accidents.

Everything that is made of metal, but does not belong to electricity: the battery, pipes, bathtub and others, can play a cruel joke when the fuse triggers. Once the grounding of the bath was carried out, connecting it with a riser: sewer or water. But now this method can not be used! If suddenly your neighbors on the floor below want to replace the metal riser with a plastic one, the ground effect will be lost. In addition, the area of ​​the capacitor will increase severalfold, and this leads to even more severe consequences.

It is quite easy to ground a bath of cast iron. Connect to its ground loop can be due to the eyelet with a hole, which the manufacturer already pre-sets on the bath. In this ear - the so-called petal - a bolt with washers and a nut is installed. And you can already connect the ground wire to it. With cast-iron baths of the Soviet model, everything is somewhat more complicated. There is no petal and it will have to be installed on its own. When asked if the grounding wire can be connected in this case to the legs, there will be a definitive answer - "no". There is no proper contact between the bathtub and its legs.

But to solve the problem with grounding it is possible by another way:

• where the legs are attached to the bath, there are small outgrowths coming from the bowl of the bath. They are designed for wedging the legs. Their surface freely allows you to drill a hole in them with a drill hole up to 1 cm deep;
• in this hole tapping is done, into which it is possible to screw in bolts with a nut and washers. In this case, you will ensure a good ground contact of the bathtub itself;
• nothing prevents using the bath wings, in which you can safely drill a hole up to 0.5 cm deep. But you will have to think about the length of the screw here.

Do I need to ground an acrylic bathtub?

Acrylic baths are very popular, as the price is quite acceptable, but they are light in weight and easy to install. The basis of such baths is, as already clear, acrylic. It is a polymer, and all polymers belong to the class of dielectrics. In other words, acrylic can not conduct an electric current on its own.

But you still need to ground the acrylic bath for at least these reasons:

• You can make acrylic bathtubs with two methods: casting and extrusion. Baths made according to the second method, do not hold the shape well. For this reason, the manufacturer installs such baths on steel frames. And steel is already a metal that conducts current. Hence, you will have to ground the bath.
• If the bath has a bowl with a large area, then eventually it will store a decent electric charge. To prevent this from happening, the bath is easier to ground.

Whirlpools function from an electrical outlet. Their operating voltage is usually 220 V, and the frequency is 50 Hz. It is not possible to use whirlpools without grounding at all, since there is a very high risk of being exposed to electric current.

When grounding a whirlpool, a number of important points should be considered:

• It is not possible to simply ground the whirlpool. First, a special outlet with grounding is installed. It uses a separate plug and a double-insulated wire. The plug, in fact, acts as a grounding device. Because of it, water will not be on the surface of the outlet. This eliminates the occurrence of a short circuit, and the socket is still called waterproof.
• The grounding outlet should be installed on the wall, at least 30 cm high from the floor surface and at least half a meter from the sides of the whirlpool. If you follow these instructions, then water can not in principle get into the outlet. It must be connected with a double-insulated cable.
• If you install not only a jacuzzi, but also other electrical equipment( boiler, washing machine, etc.), then in order to avoid voltage surges put the machine with a load of up to 16 A, as well as a protective shutdown device. Install them outside the bathroom - in the hallway or another room.
• Do not use the whirlpool if you have not yet installed a waterproof outlet. Grounding of the whirlpool bath through pipes of water, sewage or heating is also strictly prohibited. Do not allow the maintenance of the working whirlpool, and even more so use it for malfunctions in the ground.

To make a ground connection yourself, you must select the appropriate wire. It must be selected in accordance with the following specifications: The

• cable must have the necessary rigidity and have a cross section of 6 square meters.mm;
• the wire should have a yellow-green insulation made of PVC material;
• cable length should be selected individually. Preferably choose a wire from 2 m, but take into account the fact that an excessively long cable will cause a breakthrough;
• is also important aesthetic moment. It is unlikely you will like it if the wires are in sight. Hide them behind panels or the screen or spend on that side of a bath which it is practically not visible;
• to save, usually as a ground electrode, take the steel, but steel, enclosed in a copper sheath, or simply copper have higher efficiency.

Bath grounding can be carried out according to some general rules:

• manufacturers do not forget to supply all modern baths with a separate grounding lobe. It looks like an eye with a hole. A grounding wire is connected to such a petal;
• its exposed piece is clamped between washers that help to secure the bolt and nut;
• if the bathtub was made in the Soviet era, it is necessary to drill a hole in the leg or on the bathtub wing and in the same way, with the help of washers, bolts and nuts, fasten the earthing bridge jumper.

If you do not have enough experience in electrical and installation work, then it's better to contact a professional electrician who will make you ground yourself. But even if you have mastered this yourself, a specialist must check the working capacity of the grounding jumper. Otherwise you risk undesirable consequences.

There is one more important point: very many confuse zeroing with grounding. These are slightly different things, since zeroing is used only in industrial, but not for household purposes. And the confusion has gone from the fact that in apartments lately they are doing zeroing very often. This applies to water heaters, and to washing machines. But it is not recommended to conduct zeroing in residential houses, although at the same time it is not forbidden. Just imagine that a null wire for unknown reasons will burn out or an electrician accidentally connect a phase instead of zero. As a result, all your instruments will simply burn out of unnecessarily high voltage. Yes, and the goals of zeroing, and grounding are somewhat different .Zeroing is designed exclusively for the occurrence of a short circuit.