There was a little girl who was 12 who got electrocuted turning off the water Tap last year. It was in Perth and she lived with her mother in a new housing commission home . There was a problem in the house with the lights and the safety trip went off, so she phoned the maintenance phone number and they said ,," turn it back on "" which she did and the lights all worked again. She then asked her daughter To go out to the yard and turn the hose and sprinkle off and when she touched the tap she was electrocuted.
The little girl was in a coma for some time and was left with serve brain damage and is in one on those wheel beds.
Any way it went to court and the department of housing was found to be liable due to faulty contract workers who had wired up the house incorrectly . The family received one million in the court ordered pay out.,,, Not that will go any where near the support she will need for the rest of her life. She has been left bed ridden with brain damage.
Very sad , perhaps you saw it on the news ? It was in Perth,,,pete

I don't recall the incident but I wonder if the electrician who did the job still has a licence. It's all well and good for the court to find a cashed up government department responsible as the building owner but what of those who did the dodgey work? Hard to imagine that they could still be in business, especially when the fault obviously relates to work that was never tested correctly before being energised.

I am a bit paranoid about this sort of thing, as a licenced electrician myself. What I do for myself is tested before it is commissioned but I tend to double check things that I do for others because I don't want a knock on the door from the police at 3AM with a paddy wagon waiting out front. Sometimes, spending a few extra minutes is all it takes to double check that an electrical installation will be safe to use through its planned service life.

It scares me that a circulation such as Silicon Chip once advocated unlicenced people being legally allowed to work on the hard wiring in their own homes, as is apparently permitted in New Zealand. I've no doubt that there's probably people that could interpret AS 3000 without much help but I'd also be prepared to suggest that most cannot. There's also state service rules to abide by, including how to set out a meter box panel correctly and the Wiring Rules do not cover these aspects of an electrical installation.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

I think Brad, The building industry is employing lpeople who may be Technical qualified, but have little hands on experience, particular local experience, There has been a string of accidents in the building industry of late and that's unusual for Australia. Too many corners getting cut to save money , just look at the shoddy cheap parts going into plumbing and electrics,,, rubbish!,,, They get replace again and again ,, when they use to last year's,,,pete

In a series of electrical projects related to the house move from a back to b in 2012 and previous There have been several incidents and happenings that I have probably related before? These leave me to wonder why I should not have been allowed to DIY, as some of the clowns that have been here were a danger to themselves & humanity and who the hell gave them a licence.

Amusing: One wired in a light; There was horse tack on the beam, so he wired over it?

Replaced the overheads (aerials & poles) 1983: I found all of the power points had neutral switching. Power meter was running in reverse??

Replaced HW service & fuse box (previous house before I moved back to the old spot & rebuilt). Wire to the shed was too short so a lower size had been used to patch it in and there was a Jbox on the meter panel (no, no, sacred site). When tiles were removed for wiring, one was found on top of the batten being chopped by a tile. Fascinating as I thought we had eliminated the dodgy stuff.

New house: Pre build. Another really dodgy one: Only a matter of time be for he dies or gets banned. Managed to break at least two fittings, and by doing what he was told not to; Put a screw into a 40A feeder which then caused him to discover it when he went to fix the light he broke & the roof bit him (100 Year old wooden frame) It was also discovered that he put in a wire bridge in a new fuse box that was illegal. There were a couple of other things he'd done, that a contractor that had sacked him (there were more that sacked him) could not believe.

Another and I know who probably done it saw an twin core aerial burn off on a post at around 25A load: Don't know how it did not that a fire. Instead of line taps it was a brass joiner clamp used on earth wires & it melted. He was also responsible for active down wire chaffing & shorting to a metal pole.

2016 saw a major overhaul & upgrade aside from the N to E fault. The light repair was substandard & some one had gone to an 8ft flouro & took lighting wire to a 2.5mm feeder which is also a no no.

Greatest electrical achievements with the new house were running wires through the hole the waste water vent pipe was clearly going through & running the wires to the Island bench into its floor hole to the bench via the waste water pipe???? That did get sorted rather quickly. Then on the plan the laundry light going in the manhole cover?

Genius: The Isolation switch for the kitchen appliances is in a corner where, if there is a fire you can't get to it, even if you could actually reach it in the first place. Fortunately the fuse box is a subby & in the Laundry & alternative is the distributor outside on the studio wall.

They walk among us

New house: Of the light fittings two 4ft singles (still to be replaced) and two twin 4ft flouro's have done electronic ballast's, one fuse failed, and the Hob never made it out of warranty.

QUOTE: There was a little girl who was 12 who got electrocuted turning off the water Tap last year. It was in Perth

Pete: that is the story that I linked to in my post and the article announces that nobody has been blamed for it. The one million dollars was paid ex gratia by the WA government on the basis that it's repaid from any insurance payout.

No one is to blame? Really? How about the electricians who attended to the reported "tingling" and didn't have the nous to check the incoming neutral, which is well known to be Suspect Number One in such cases and, as the photos show, is clearly the culprit in this case.

Seeing that story on the TV news when it first happened made me feel quite ill at the thought that BOTH of our 2 boys could have gone the same way in 1971 whilst we were living at Exmouth.
A PMG staff house where the previous staffer had reported tingles from the garden taps in the yard and a LOT worse if turning on or off with wet bare feet.
The PMG sparkies had been called in and could find nothing so bonded every exposed water pipe and ALL the house steel stumps together to reduce the effect (house was about 1200mm above the ground).

When we moved in the boys (6 and 4YO) told us that the front garden tap was "biting" them and I could measure at times up to 60V AC from the tap to the damp soil in the vicinity. Occasionally it was approaching 100V AC which as I found out was dependent upon the house load and the electric kettle made it a lot worse. I was beginning to smell the proverbial RAT but why was it so??
Almost anywhere around the house that 60V AC was measurable from the any of the bonded together steel stumps and any damp bit of soil.

When another couple of PMG sparkies doing the usual northwest run of jobs also could not find a solution again it really bothered me so after they had gone I popped open the house meter box and disconnected the earth wire to the neutral link. BIG spark as it came out and house power went off. Then switched the power OFF as I should have done and reconnected the earth, power switch back on and house had power again.
Got onto the local powerhouse people and told them I suspected that the Neutral had gone open circuit and I got grilled about HOW I would possibly think that and then got ticked off for doing what I did and they came out and checked.

Result was that the Neutral was OK but had NEVER been connected to the correct terminal in the barge mounted Mains Connection box as a 4 terminal box had been used for a single phase installation.
The Supply Authority had wrongly connected the Neutral when they ran the feeder from pole to house and ALL house power was working earth return since the house had been built...like about 6 years.

A number of kids had been living in that house before us and any of them COULD have ended up like that poor girl did recently and it made me wonder how they could have missed that open Neutral.

That result could have been quite feasible - 32VAC or 110VDC at 50mA is a potentially lethal dose of electricity.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Result was that the Neutral was OK but had NEVER been connected to the correct terminal in the barge mounted Mains Connection box as a 4 terminal box had been used for a single phase installation. The Supply Authority had wrongly connected the Neutral when they ran the feeder from pole to house and ALL house power was working earth return since the house had been built...like about 6 years.

Extraordinary. Would have been interesting to put a clamp ammeter on the main earth at peak load.

As for that scolding response from the electricity authority -- by way of contrast: a person I know some years back called Energy Australia about tingling taps in the shower. Soon afterwards they came home to a dark house with all of the power off and a notice from Ausgrid under their door saying that owing to an electrical supply fault, all power has been disconnected until it is repaired. No mucking around there -- just as it should be.