Electric shock off mixer taps.

[Crockett]

I have a mixer tap in my bathroom, one of the ones where you flick a lever and the water comes out of either the shower or taps. Over the past few days I have been getting a slight shock a bit like static but happening much more often off the taps. It is not an elecetric shower and there is no electricity near it so I am very confused. In fact the only things electric in the bathroom are the light and extraction fan which both come on with the light pull cord. Any ideas what can be causing this?

[Danni79]

Hi there, we had the same thing with our bathroom taps aswell as getting shocks you could feel a slight tingling when you ran the water out the taps too - no-one else could feel it and we couldn't figure out why - turns out I was the only one in bare feet meaning no rubber soles - everyone else was earthed!! lol!! anyhow turns out that we needed an extra earth connected to the mains electric as the one we has wasn't adequate and we'd had alot of rain and the mixture of the two meant that electric was 'feeeding' in through the pipes. I would strongly suggest getting an electrician asap to check it out as ours got gradually worse till we did!! x

[Crockett]

Thanks for the answer. Does seem strange that it has only just started out of the blue!! That sounds expensive, did it cost a lot??

[4candles]

If I was getting shocks off the taps I wouldn't worry about the cost - get a professional in!

[buildersmate]

Domestic earthing takes the form of two types, both of which must be fitted.
1) Earth bonding, whereby the earth from the incoming electricity supply is connected to the metal water / gas pipes.
2) Supplementary bonding whereby the different metal pipes in a bathroom are connected together by an earth strap.
It isn't difficult or expensive for a qualified electrician to do this for you. He will test the quality of the existing earthing with a meter. The bonding is a screw-on strap, linked together by a few metres of earth cable.