Inexpensive Earthing / Grounding setups - Tried and true solutions

[MartaB]

I have some dumb questions, sorry. I want to try these techniques but I don't know how to begin understanding them.

What is a popper connector?

What is an earth wire?

What do you do with an earth bonding plug?

How do you know if a metal item is earthed?

What is an earthing socket?

Thank you.

[Jexx]

Hi MartaB,

I will do my best to answer your questions, please see below:

(Q) What is a popper connector?
A popper connector is a metal connector which makes electrical connections using a press stud. These are virtually identical to the clothes poppers that can be found on some jackets and trousers (used in place of clothes buttons). You should be able to see several images with popper connectors in previous posts (you have to be logged in to see the images). I sometimes buy cheap ECG or EKG cables from Ebay which have the popper connectors already attached to a length of wire.


(Q) What is an earth wire?
An earth wire is any wire used to connect to earth. When earthing ourselves, we can use any type of wire at all. I often use a super flexible speaker wire, but only because it soft, flexible and easy to work with.


(Q) What do you do with an earth bonding plug?
The earth bonding plug is used to connect anti static wrist straps and mats to the mains electrical earth connection.
An earth bonding plug is a special type of plug made to plug into a domestic mains electrical outlets. This earth bonding plug then has connectors on the back of it which allow things to connect to the mains earth pin via a resistor. These earth bonding plugs are used in computer and electronics companies to connect people to earth so static can't damage the computer chips they are working with. Anti static wrist straps (shown in my second post above) are often connected to the mains earth via an earth bonding plug (yellow earth bonding plugs shown in third post).



(Q) How do you know if a metal item is earthed?
If you have metal or copper water pipes in your home, then these are sure to have excellent connections to earth, as the metal pipes go deep into the ground and connect to the streets main water supply. This is also true for metal kitchen sinks connected to copper/metal water pipes. You can also use an off the shelf earthing meter or even a standard multimeter to check to see if a mental pipe is making a good connection to earth. There are many great YouTube videos out there on how to use a multi-meter to check your electrical flow to earthed metal objects. A metal rod driven in the ground also makes a pretty sure fire earth connection, some people prefer this approach.

(Q) What is an earthing socket?
An earthing socket is usually a 4 millimeter diameter banana socket (electrical connection socket). These are often found on yellow mains earth bonding plugs. Anti-static wrist bands plug right into them. They are the socket style connections used to plug anti static mats and wrist bands into (hope this makes sense).

Best Wishes

Jexx

[Jexx]

I have recently had a lot of success with stick on copper tape which is connected to a strong earth. I have used this around my bed, along walls and even across my bedroom doorway. This seems to do a good job with stopping negs taking certain paths, and has gone a long way to stopping night time neg attacks while I am sleeping.