Electric shock from socket

[Mybasilplantispastitsbest]

I’m in my newly renovated (two year project) house, finally unpacking stuff after having to wait months to get floors in.

Just plugged old lamp in, was changing round the plugs and felt a faint crackle, put my hand down again to the socket absent mindedly and got a proper shock.

Managed to put on some rubber shoes and switch both socket switches off.

Is it more likely to be the lamp or the socket that is the issue? Feeling like holy shit my life savings are spent on this renovation and now I don’t trust the wiring.

The electrician who wired it is coming round tomorrow to take a look.

Has anyone had this? I have never experienced this in more than 20 UK moves and am freaking out!!

does the socket have a metallic face?

is the plug properly screwed together tight?

did you have your finger on any of the three pins when you plugged in the plug?

Socket is metallic yes.

plug properly screwed in yes

no no fingers on prongs at the time

Are the other sockets in the house OK? If the system hasn't tripped, then it may just be the lamp, although I appreciate you won't want to go round testing everything yourself at this point.

If your electrician is not able to put your mind at rest, you could order a Condition Report from a different firm (costs £200 or less) to check that everything is safe.

When I got a mains shock it was from a dodgy extension lead rather than the socket. It threw me across the room - horrible. No advice as I'm not an electrician, but sympathies.

Yes they all seem okay- luckily he’s to come around anyway so I’ll get him to check it.

report is a good idea! He’s such a lovely electrician and builder is amazing too so was just very freaked out.

Oh my god that must have been terrifying!

It may be that your wiring is not suitable for metal sockets/switches. Older wiring isn't.
But the electrician will know what to do.
I've been hurled across a room from a 'bad' plug. In a photographic darkroom, where you have to plug the red safelight in complete darkness. Some idiot had taken the cover off the plug, I picked it up and put it in properly by the sides, then placed my palm over it to push it home, thereby connecting myself to the mains. It chucked me across the room, I hit a table, fell back with my arm still rigidly out, and landed palm across the plug again, which promptly threw me off a second time. I was in there alone with the only keys and nobody would have missed me for hours.
It was indeed horrible, as the poster above said- I had a weird feeling for some hours afterwards, and I do not recommend it. If I'd had a weak heart, which I might not even have known about, I'd have been dead.
Which is another reason why I am very strict about safety both at work and at home..........and I am very particular about anything electric. I always get the professionals in. You're very wise to do so.

Has the house been rewired as part of the renovation? If so, that sort of shock should have tripped an RCD?

If not. It might be worth asking the question when your electrician is there. If the wiring is reasonably new and in spec may be able to get away with a new consumer unit. A complete rewire can be a horrible experience though.

The whole house has been taken back to the brick in the past year and rewired 100% along with the heating and plumbing, passed all building controls.

Was your hand wet?

No, definitely not wet!

Sounds like the earth ( green/yellow) wire hasn’t been attached to the socket face or the back box behind.

not usually required for plastic faced sockets but should be done for metallic faced sockets.

IT WAS THE IKEA BULB!!!!!

Lovely electrician checked the socket, checked the lamp, figured out it was the bulb.

A LOT more reassuring than redoing the whole wiring again hahaha phew.

Sounds weird to me. The whole point of an installation is that it is supposed to be intrisically safe. If the bulb fails in some way that causes a short from live to ground, then that should either blow the fuse in the lamp if it fused appropriately, or trip the main fuse/RCD on the circuit.

I guess there must have been some really low current leakage from live to ground as a result of the build failing that did not trip the RCD or take any fuses out.

Anyway, glad it is fixed.

When you say build do you mean bulb?

Because if you replace build with bulb then that’s pretty much what electrician said.

Yes bulb not build.

Seems very off to me. Ours is a new rewire and the slightest thing makes it trip- as it ought to do. A bulb ought not to give you a shock with a new system, surely? I will ask OH (our electrical person in this household). When I mentioned the original problem he thought it must be an old system for it not to have tripped, or that the earth wire had not been properly conncted to the socket.

It depends. It's a technical discussion really.

RCDs tend to be rated at around the x10mA level, I think for domestic circuits they are 20-30mA. It's difficult to choose an RCD because on the one hand you want one to protect in case of failure/shock, on the other hand you don't want it to nuisance trip because of the cumulative earth leakage on the ring. I can't remember for sure, but electical domestic products I think can have a leakage current of around 3mA, so if you plugged enough into a ring, you might actually get a nuisance trip.

Bearing in mind 7mA for 3 seconds across your heart can kill (web source) it's entirely possible (although probably unlikely) to get a shock from a circuit protected by an RCD that will kill you without tripping the RCD. You can imagine some sort of failure mode inside a LED bulb (which contain quite complex switching circuits to downconvert the mains voltage to an LED compatible one) where the earth leakage increases to a level still under the RCD trip but enough to give a shock.

You've then got the issue of why if the failure occurs the operator gets a shock rather than the leakage being handled by the ground connection, but again there could be some explanations for this that lie outside a fault in the ground connection in the socket, such as (partial) current sharing if the operator is well grounded. It could be for example that the operator only conducts a small proportion of the total leakage current from a fault, but enough for it to be noticable.

So the TLDR for me is I think there are potential explanations outside of there being issues with the socket..

Mad but it could actually have been static and not an electrical problem at all.

if he’s a proper electrician he’ll get to the bottom of it very fast.

A fair bit of guesses going on on this thread and from the "electrician". They may be nice but they don't have a clue.
A bulb is connected to live and neutral so it could either blow open circuit, or in some extreme case short out and trip the circuit breaker.
It could not in any situation cause an electric shock from the socket or plug. Any electrician saying so is guessing rubbish and should be kicked off site.
A badly faulty fixture (the whole appliance) could cause a shock but the RCD and possibly the circuit breaker should trip immediately, although you could feel a nasty shock in the mean time if you are touching something earthed and a live part of the lamp. But the lamp needs disabling and throwing in the bin.

Ask you electrician what the earth loop impedance is at the socket in question, he should reply with something under around one ohm. If he doesn't understand or doesn't know how to test it then kick him off site.
Also ask what the disconnection time is measured for the RCD protecting that circuit. It should be less than 30ms, again this is basic basic stuff and essential for your safety.

My concern is he's blamed his dangerous wiring on an appliance and you've got a death trap installation.

I share @johnd2 's concerns, although I have no specialist knowledge. In the OP's place I would still go ahead and get a condition report from a reputable company. I wouldn't take the word of the electrician who installed the wiring.

Even if everything works fine now, if there's something unsafe it could cause a problem later. When my last kitchen was installed, the electrician seemed competent, but a few years later after a series of unexplained outages, a condition report revealed several serious faults.

Many years back in my old house I swapped the plastic light switch covers over to metal ones. One day I switched the light on, saw a blue spark and got a nice crackle of electric shoot up my arm.

Got a trusted electrician round and we found that on the reverse of the switch plate was a piece of metal that was sticking out. I’d wired everything in correctly however one of the wires had a tiny section where the rubber cover was too short (hope that makes sense). Each time I’d used the switch the electric had been arcing from the bare section of wire to the metal bit on the back of the switch, that day was a particularly big arc and it got me. Once the bit of metal was bent out the way and electrical tape put over the wire, it never happened again.

Sometimes it can be something that you can easily overlook - maybe your electrician had done a similar thing and rather admit to that, made up the story about the lightbulb being the cause?

I were the OP I'd be getting a different firm of electricians in to do a complete system test. The bulb explanation sounds very iffy to me too.
Having spoken to a friend, (not a household electrician and freely admits it) but an electrical engineer, they feel there could be a number of explanations, though none they have thought of would be conclusive on the evidence presented, but that regardless of the cause, the system definitely needs checking out.

@MidlandCatGirl "Once the bit of metal was bent out the way and electrical tape put over the wire, it never happened again."
And the CPC aka the earth wire tested and reconnected?!
All metal accessories must be earthed, for exactly that reason. If your lighting circuit is old enough to be non earthed then you're very limited in what accessories you can safely use (and you're 20 years over due a rewire on those circuits)

johnd2 everything was earthed and as it should have been. The live wire simply had its sleeve cut too short. The error was mine. At no point did I say the electrical system wasn’t earthed, don’t know what made you come to that conclusion.