Sceadwian
Banned
Brownout said:A broken water pipe cannot cause a short from live to ground. If there were the case, and it was a common occuranace, there would be alot of fried people. Using a cold water pipe for grounding is a very common practice, and nobody ever gets hurt by it.
I would beg to differ. This is a common case common enough there's code requirements, iron pipe coming into the house, copper pipe in the house. Do a straight metal on metal union and you have a galvanic cell that will cause the pipe to corrode at that junction to some eventual failure, pipe breaks water pours into the house causes an electric short circuit in a device in the basement that causes live to be connected directly to the houses ground which because the water pipe broke is now floating.
In the US this is easily solved by the simple code requirement that all dissimilar metal piping has to be joined with plastic fitting and separate clamps and a grounding strap have to be used to bond the two systems. If the pipe breaks the grounding strap will still allow GFCI's or breakers to trip before property fires or personal electrocution can occur.