I'm just asking as this phenomena intrigues me. All or most of my radio's are connected to a long wire antenna and are earthed via their mains cords, whenever a tap is turned on anywhere in the house,(hot or cold, but even more so with hot water) the radio's go crazy!
Can anybody explain this? It seems to be on the verge of paranormal!!! When water flows out of a tap. the radio's know and misbehave, nolume changes, they hiss and buzz and make scratchy noises!!! Crazy...

First some questions: (a) is the plumbing copper or old galvanised iron? and (b), is there an earth clamp on a tap or pipe near your meter board?

Old houses! Ya gotta love them.

https://youtu.be/nstn4Wscl1w

IT's copper piping and yes there is an earth stake next to the meter box, but not a clamp on a tap that I have noticed, however I shall have a good look tomorrow and see!

I'm wondering if the symptoms you describe might possibly relate to a high earth current in your premises -- which can be caused by a poor supply neutral connection (in your premises or a neighbouring one) and is a potentially dangerous situation.

Anyone in your house ever felt a slight tingle from the taps in the kitchen, laundry or bathroom?

It would be interesting to put a clamp AC ammeter on your main earth cable and on the water pipe at your water meter.

but even more so with hot water

The hot water will be connected to your water heater via copper pipes. Is it an electric heater? There might be a problem with it. Not earthed properly?

Jamie,

Probably a dumb question, but you are not on tank water, with a pressure pump, are you?

No, mains water, gas hot water and no I've never felt a tingle off a tap, I know exactly what you mean GTC, years ago at my grandmothers I'd get a tingle off the taps, if I had a cut on a finger it'd really bite and if my head touched the shower head everything would go fuzzy! But no, none of that, I just put it down to a peculiarity of valve radio's, but maybe not if it doesn't happen to the rest of you all! I might investigate the earth stake or get an electrician if it's possibly a dangerous situation!

Your experience at your grandmother's house fits the high earth current situation causing the water pipes and fittings to be at voltage significantly above zero. In the worst case, this can lead to severe shock or death, especially in baths or showers.

Your radios "go crazy" case is quite interesting. I haven't heard of it before and would like to know the cause.

A few things you might like to try: Momentarily power off the water heater at its main switch and see if there's a change in behaviour. If so, then then that would tend to point the finger at the heater or its circuit. Otherwise, momentarily disconnect the earth from one of the radios and see if it no longer exhibits the symptoms (naturally, take due care with that).

Jamie: what's the latest on this?

Silicon Chip magazine wrote an article on this in their August, 2014 issue.
If you are interested send me a message via email and I can send you a scan of the article.
Gordon

There was discussion on that article at the time, here:

https://vintage-radio.com.au/default.asp?f=1&th=774#5442

It may pay to get an electrician to check things out? It is amazing what you find when you look. When we changed to underground wiring recently I allowed $1000 for mods & repairs, over and above the cabling & new fuse & distribution boxes: Used it.

Apart from a bit of incompetence, there was wrong wiring, wrong wire, & one wire had shorted neutral to earth, the latter not mattering much the way the original was wired, but it did with RCD's. I have seen one house lose neutral and courtesy of a Possum (deceased) a caravan with only active (scary).

The thing to watch, is now with plastic plumbing pipe metal sinks & stuff with plastic drains can "float". turning on a tap could be completing a circuit, via the water & I am smelling a rather serious neutral earth fault. There is no guarantee that some Goose hasn't wired something wrongly.

As noted, I was invited to have a blitz on power cables at the Mens shed: Scary around 20% non compliant. There were several with inverted wires, some I destroyed & I loved the recycled 2 wire vacuum cleaner cable with 3 pin plug & socket (that didn't last long).

It is handy to have one of those plug in devices (some with three lights) that indicate if a plug or cable is correctly wired, or has a problem, these are handy with extension cables.

Be warned & I have seen a few & a mate owns one. There are still old houses wired with cloth rubber wire & have metal ducting / conduit. The metal conduit has killed, and recently.

There is still lots and lots of VIR cabling in split seam conduit. Over the years I've seen it get blended with TPS (the modern white cabling) and this is probably more dangerous than the original installation. Providing the wiring has never been overloaded, VIR is usually perfectly safe inside the conduit. Most often, when I have decommissioned old wiring and ripped it out (it's illegal to leave redundant wiring in situ) the portion of the cabling inside the pipe was fine and only where the wire leaves the pipe to connect to fittings has been disturbed by mice and other wildlife and this is the bit most often seen by people when they replace broken lamp holders, for example.
The biggest issue for VIR wire these days is that it's simply not thick enough to handle a 20 amp circuit breaker. It's more like 2mm² rather than 2.5mm² and this can make a difference where heaters, electric jugs or anything with an element is used.

Sorry GTC, I haven't really found anything yet. There's no earth current buzz in the shower as such and the house is 1960's weatherboard,

was asbestos but has had cladding replaced a decade ago, the crazy radio phenomena isn't as pronounced now it's summer, yet still

persists somewhat. Still haven't got around to getting an electrician to investigate and I don't have a clamp ammeter, though I plan to get a

multi-meter with one soon (soon as I stop mis-placing 10, 12 & 13 mil sockets and having to constantly replace them!), as it would be very

handy to have for many uses. Still puzzled by this and somewhat surprised to find it's not a universal feature of valve radio's! I will get back

to you once I find something which might explain it! Cheers.