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Hi, I bought a new van last year and I found that the earth lead had never been connected to the chassis.

My question is, was there any danger to my family in an unearthed van. could we have been electrocuted?

Thanks for any opinions...

240 volt is earthed through the EHU cable as you connect it. if you plan to go france read this.

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In the UK we fuse and switch only the positive feed, apart from a few instances like your immersion heater, shower, cooker ect. which should a double pole switch.

Abroad its different, they fuse both sides, and use D/P switches, so for them it doesn't matter which way around the plug is, the result for us is that when you turn off your 230v socket in the motorhome, the positive could still be live.

You can buy a simple polarity checker which plugs into a socket for a few pounds, alternatively you can do as many do and ignore it. If you want to be 100% safe then you need to buy or make a short lead which has the positive and negative reversed, you then plug this into the EHU and then plug your main lead into it.

Quote: Originally posted by michael on 21/1/2011

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In the UK we fuse and switch only the positive feed, apart from a few instances like your immersion heater, shower, cooker ect. which should a double pole switch.

Abroad its different, they fuse both sides, and use D/P switches, so for them it doesn't matter which way around the plug is, the result for us is that when you turn off your 230v socket in the motorhome, the positive could still be live.

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