Electronic – My country does not have grounding system, How to protect theself

groundingprotection

I live in Egypt where the neutral wire is grounded. The ground wire is not separated from the neutral wire. A wall outlet has two holes only (live and neutral), The third whole (ground) does not exist.

According to this question, I can NOT use neutral wire as a ground:

Why don't we use neutral wire for to ground devices and earth wire for closing the circuit?

So, How can I protect myself from the weak electrical shocks that happens when I touch the metal case of an electric device? Such as: The metal case of a personal computer or a washing machine.

I have one more question, What makes the shock too weak?
I accidentally touched the live wire before and it was horrible.

If the live wire touches the metal case and then I touched the metal case, What makes the shock weaker? And If the live wire does not touche the metal case, What is the supply of the metal case? What causes the weak shock?

Thank you very much,

Best Answer

Usually the tingle you feel when touching an ungrounded case of a device is due to a capacitor (called a Y-cap, for EMI reduction) from the line to the case. This is a special safety-rated capacitor which will not allow a dangerous amount of current to leak onto the case. Nevertheless, the case is intended to be grounded so that you don't feel the tingle. You could connect the case to a grounding rod or maybe a cold water pipe.

For safety in the case of a live wire contacting an ungrounded case you could replace your outlets with ground fault interrupter type outlets. Then if you come between line (hot case) and some external ground you would be protected.