Not to be confused with an earth home, earthing your house is necessary to keep you and your family safe. Electricity will, given a chance, want to travel to the actual earth by the most direct route. If you get in its way, it will go through you and potentially cause severe injury.

Earthing is an essential requirement of any electrical installation and is covered within the safety requirements of BS 7671. If the house is not earthed, it can be extremely dangerous, and people could get electrocuted.

Your home could have several earthing arrangements, including a main earthing terminal and arrangements on your domestic wiring circuits.

Main earthing terminal 

Depending on your house's particular earthing arrangements, this main terminal connects either back to your electricity company’s earth, or in some houses connects to an earthing rod which is buried deeply in the earth in the ground outside your property.

Domestic wiring circuits 

In many homes, if you look at your consumer unit (which you may think of as your fuse box), you can see the different electrical circuits that are in your property. These circuits are connected to an earth cable.

Each circuit is protected with a circuit breaker that is triggered automatically if it recognises a fault, switching off the circuit. The circuit breaker is intended to trip before the wires can heat to a dangerous level, and to stop you getting a shock from a faulty appliance. When a circuit breaker trips, everything connected to that circuit will lose power. Only once you have switched it back on at the consumer unit will the power return.

In addition, most modern consumer units have Residual Current Devices (RCD) fitted. If these detect that electricity is flowing to earth, they will trip, shutting off any circuits they are designed to protect. This should stop electrocution or fire breaking out from a faulty appliance or circuit.

Who should earth the house?

We recommend you speak to an electrician. That way you can ensure your property, belongings and, more importantly, your family is safe.

Find a reputable electrician who won’t just tell you that you need to completely rewire or get a new consumer unit for the sake of it. Check with your electricity supplier too – sometimes they offer a free call-out to check that your electrical system is up to date and that you are safe.

If you are looking for help with any electrical issues, you may find some of these services useful: