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I'm having problems with my electrical oven: I get shocked when I touch it. I think the way to solve this is to connect the ground wire it has (the green wire) to ground?

The problem with that is that my house doesn't have any electrical connection to ground (the copper bar buried in the earth); every electrical outlet in my house has the ground unplugged. I was thinking that I could create a ground for this outlet by drilling a hole in the wall behind the oven, running a copper wire down inside the wall and into the earth, and then connect the oven's green wire to that. Would that make an acceptable ground? Should I do this or is there another option?

I'm also worried about the power consumption, if I did this, the oven would be "on" all the time so my bill would increase?

Other thing I could do is to check every wire isolation, but I don't have a tool for that. What should I be getting? If I did this, would the ground connection be unnecessary?

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Maybe you mean static discharge? you mean only if you touch it a little shock? or does it shock you the whole time?If shock you the whole time then this is dangerous like the other guys said and disconnect it... ground will not help. – ppumkin Jul 5 '11 at 12:57

migrated from electronics.stackexchange.com Jul 5 '11 at 0:08

1 Answer

up vote 9 down vote

It sounds to me like your oven has a serious fault.

Disconnect it immediately and do no use it.

(Connecting it to ground should cause the fuse to blow immediately.)

The fault probably lies in the heating element (these often fail and short to ground)

Your house should have a ground connection - which country are you in? Most have regulations requiring a ground connection.

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Thanks, how can I check the failure of those elements? do you know? although I have used it in that state and nothing has happened, nothing but me lightly electrocuted. I'm in Colombia, the regulation exists but this is a very old house, made in the times where Colombia was messy (it still is, but you don't see much of that in urban sectors like cities or some towns, at least not the way that it was before)... Now it would be very expensive to make the connections. – Roger Jul 4 '11 at 23:22
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Get it checked out by a professional household appliance maintenance person. They will have all the test kit, and can probably get a new element cheaper than you can get one yourself. – Majenko Jul 5 '11 at 8:26

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