What is the best way of doing body earthing of scaffoldings. Do you feel it is required to do earthing provisions for scaffoldings in construction industry. Is this a requirement for third party approval of scaffolding to pass scaffolding certification.
What is the most effective earth resistance kit available at the market. Please provide any manufacturer details?
Regards,
Haridas

I have never heard of such a requirement and I'm an electrician. If on a PME supply then DON'T ever do it. It would be impossible to effectively earth a scaffold in any case (tower or independent tied etc.)
zimmy

If any electrical gear is to be used on scaffolding it should be supplied via 230/110V centre tapped to earth transformer.

On a PME/TN-C-S intake you would be connecting the scaffold to the neutral conductor of the intake and exporting any fault conditions outside the equipotential zone (TN-S included but no connection to N at the intake).

If you were to bond the scaff to any means of earthing you would need to have electrical earthing conductors linking every and all pipe work together, every joint. Think about it, pointless having just one pole earthed, and by the nature of the construction, one could never guarantee the integrity of the clamps liking the scaff poles to each other. A bit like trying to earth a ceiling grid of an office building.

Concrete can and is earthy in the dry and when wet....

By the way, earthing water and gas etc is done for equipotential voltage reasons not for earh paths although they can and do take a certain current to earth in the event of a Phase to earth fault.

In my current chosen industry, events and rock and roll, we earth spike all outdoor stages and structures

yep... 13 amp supplies seem to run out of power after a couple of hundred yards, no matter how thick we make the cables

for 20mm please read 10mm

Thanks to all for the reply, especially to Zimmy.
In one of our site what we did is; for one of the cuplock we inserted an anchorbolt and connect it to the earthwire. This earthwire we have connected to the building earthing with a rod. After this we have calculated the earthing through the earth resitence meter and the resistance value is less than 0.5 oms. According to electrical engineer the whole structure of scaffolding is now earthed. Hope, this can be followed for every scaffoldings.

You simply cannot be sure that every clamp on the scaff has good continuity and therefore between one section and the next you may have a leathal voltage difference

Forgive me Haridas

I was under the impression that the scaffold was external to the building. Internal is something quite different.

In this case it may well be a good thing. I just hope that the testing was not done with a Earth-fault-loop-impedance tester as this was not the thing to do. Re the bonding to any extraneous metal work such as water pipes etc the bonding cable should be no more than 0.05 Ohm end to end. 0.5 Ohm will give a voltage difference between bonded parts and hence a shock risk.