OK.

Meanwhile, how do you manage to get blank lines between text lines in your posts?

Brad, do you have "BX" housewire in Australia?

More durable than "Romex", and more modern "BX" has a thin bare wire to pass fault currents to ground.

You can make tighter turns with Romex, though.

A few years ago I heard of a scandal in Australia about foil backed insulation being installed inside houses, some under the floor. Maybe staples holding it to the floor boards pierced a power cable? And making the foil "hot" and touching a drain pipe?

That stuff you call Romex - we use a similar product here. In the bottom photo it is known as 'twin and earth' in the trade. Solid conductors are illegal here these days because the connections cannot be made tight enough. Most domestic wiring is now seven core. Colours are red for active, black for neutral, green/yellow for earth, white for switch wire, straps, etc.

I've never seen the cable in the top photo. I don't think it'd go too well here.

Back around 2008 the government we had at the time embarked on a wasteful exercise to subsidise the insulation in peoples' homes. It was one of many socialist disasters that they initiated and amongst all the other problems that surfaced was the electrocution of four insulation installers - who were completely inexperienced at the work they were being asked to do. They were in roof spaces stapling foil insulation down to ceiling joists and when one of the staples went through a lighting circuit, well, the rest is history. The whole sheet of insulation became live so when the installer touched something else that was metallic then that is when they would have copped the shock.

That is what happens when governments get generous with money. All of a sudden everyone was a batt installer and some of these people were taking money for jobs poorly completed, dangerously completed or simply incomplete.

and some of these people were taking money for jobs poorly completed, dangerously completed or simply incomplete.

... or not even done in the first place. I recall one scammer who claimed for many more units than were in the block, and another who claimed for apartments that had concrete roofs. Governments handing out "program" money is a siren call to scammers.

There were many cases of the fly-by-nighters arriving at a punter's home, dragging bags of batts into their roofspace, hanging around in the roof for 20 minutes then coming down and telling the landlord the job was done. Years later the batts are still in their bags. On other occasions some of these companies would visit a home to do a quote and they'd quote on homes that already had batts in the roof. This would be followed by a visit to 'install' the new batts as per the above description.

I've done electrical work in some of these places and duly informed the owners about how their new home insulation is performing.

Hi GTC, to get the blank line between lines just type out your whole post as normal and then starting at the first line, mouse click at the end

and then hit "enter twice" which makes a blank line. Just work down with a mouse click at the end of each line and two pushes of "enter"

That's all!

^ sure, but why do it? Makes forum pages longer and requires otherwise unnecessary scrolling.

I find the spaces makes a post harder to read.

It would be an idea if there is a really good earth available (My best & used, at another location, was a bore casing 120ft into 80' of brackish water) it might pay to get the electrician to use something like that to see what voltage difference appears between it and your N, E, A.

Corrosion & dry ground can play a big part in ineffective grounding. The grounding of the farms distribution box is actually into an old creek bed. & this shed is grounded into another underground stream. There is only 25ft of metal pipe feeding a toilet the other close to 1km is all plastic as the well water eats metal.

I am lucky here as being rural, if there is an earthing issue a long trench into a wet area, is viable & done and the centurion trees are a but one, good guide as to where that area is.

"Blank lines" Divisions into paragraphs keeps different context / ideas separate for clarity

Marc

Actually I find the spaces makes it easier to read and double spacing is a requirement for academic writing at university for that very reason, without the space if one averts ones eyes for any reason, one often finds oneself reading the wrong sentence or one which one has already read all over again. In any case minus the first line paragraph indent I was merely following the convention required by my university studies and had thought that fairly standardised, however I'm happy to do in Rome as the Romans do really...

I find the spaces makes a post harder to read.

Ditto. Please don't do that.

double spacing is a requirement for academic writing

Another hangover from the days of typewriters. I well recall having typists double-space my document drafts so that I could make corrections and additions between the lines. These days leave it for academia.

"Blank lines" Divisions into paragraphs keeps different context / ideas separate for clarity

Sure but we are discussing blank line between every line. Unnecessary.

I'm happy to do in Rome as the Romans do

Gratias tibi ago

"Sure but we are discussing blank line between every line. Unnecessary"

The idea with Newsletters & I do three is to keep the font & its size to one that is readable. In the newsletters that means avoiding 10 or smaller & stay away from scripts

Well nothing abnormal with the earth current. The earth stake is next to the back door, the meter box only has the electricity meter, no switches, these are in the hallway. The earth stake has the wire attached which goes under the house and is attached in three places also to the rainwater pipe that comes down from under the laundry through the concrete underground then up through the concrete to the tank. The wire then heads under the house towards where the switchboard is in the hallway with it's RCD's.

Jamie, is this phenomenon still occurring?