This article was posted 02/22/2007 and is most likely outdated.

Reporter Wants to Know about Stray Voltage Cases
 

 
Topic - Stray Voltage
Subject
- Reporter Wants to Know about Stray Voltage Cases

February 22, 2007  

Ask a Question |  Weekly Code GraphicQuizzes |  Free Stuff InstructorsOnline Training Products | Seminars | SubscribeUnsubscribe
[ image1 Post Comments | View Comments | Notify Me When Comments Are Added ] Web Page Version [Printer-Friendly]    

Reporter Wants to Know about Stray Voltage Cases

Reporter for major media outlet wants to talk to people who have had problems, or believe they are having problems, with stray voltage. Please respond by clicking on the "Click Here to Post a Comment" link below with an email address and phone number. This is for research on a possible story concerning stray voltage and solutions to it. Thanks very much!

Click here to post a comment
[ View More Newsletters ] [ Send to a Friend ] [ Post Comments | View Comments | Notify Me When Comments Are Added ]

Copyright © Mike Holt Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article is protected by United States copyright and other intellectual property laws and may not be
displayed or published on the internet without the prior written permission of Mike Holt Enterprises, Inc.

http://www.MikeHolt.com     1-888-NEC-CODE (1-888-632-2633)

Experiencing a Problem? Click Here

 
Comments
  • I do not know if this the exact same item you are looking for but on one case a home owner was worried about getting shocked from her windows near her kitchen sick. About the time I assured her that it had to be in her mind I got the shock of my life. As it turned out, an awning company had driven a gutter nail through a belly board to hold up a trellis and had nicked a 240 vac 60 amp oven run. It only nicked one leg of the circuit but the nail had carried the 120 voltage up and through the chicken wire for the stucco and to any metal framed window in the house and god did it pack a punch! The circuit did not trip the breaker but it did run a good 30 amps through the nicked leg of the oven run and through out the entire house. One side effect was that their new water heater copper flex hoses and shut off valves to the house and water heater were corroded through in just a few months. Another time was a police pistol range had hooked up two conex containers (loaded with hundreds of pounds of gun powder and pistol primers for their bullet presses) to a 120/208 3 phase 4 wire system. They had one hot leg grounded and did not know what to do with the 3rd leg to their single phase residential load center. They called me in to find out why they were using around $50 a month even when the range powder house was closed down for a few months and nothing was on. Lucky for them that the two containers were raised up on pallets and had enough room between the two of them (again with a pallet landing protected with a tarp from the rain) so that nobody actually leaned against the sides of these metal containers in all the years they had this system up. It was also amazing that, considering the amount of powder and primer dust from the hundreds of thousands of bullets they loaded that they did not get dusted off from an electrical accident. Loose neutrals, bad grounds, arcing across high voltage insulators, high voltage street lighting shorting out and vaporizing the copper wire into glass tubing that carried the voltage plasma like between street lights hundreds of feet apart on one conductor systems and energizing iron sewer covers in the street mysteriously all come with the territory but the best was a powerhouse that build themselves on top of a shale hillside and imported dirt from a construction site miles away. They built their ground grid on top of the shale and simply covered the lousy attempt at their grid. One minor but important additional mistake was using split bolt and compression connectors and splices for their grid. They never could get the power plant to work in the 14 years they were open. They had imported the best test techs all over the world as the Japanese builders of the plant had given up. Nobody could figure out whey they lost control of their plant. It was only when I was visiting a friend who was bidding on tearing out the control room that I saw where they dug and that the ground grid was resting of shale that I knew what the problem. It was strange that they would not let me bring in a XIT test team and check for their ground until the new plant was finished. It was they that they found out that their new plant would not work either unless they allowed me to sell them set of XIT grounding wells. Even XIT did not see the need for deep wells but I had them make their wells 15 ft deep and we put down over 500 ft of #0000 bare 11 conductor ground cable and shot over 500 Cad Welds. When we finished we had reduced the resistance from 48 ohms to 1.46. Not bad. I can only image how many mysterious voltages they chased trying to find out where their control voltages went when they were totally ungrounded. If they had just let me bring in the gang they would have saved themselves building a whole new plant with just about $50k worth of grounding! Now I do not know if these stories are what you are looking for outside of shielding or better grounding but there you have it. J. Savage

    J Savage

Reply to this comment
* Your Name:
   Your name will appear under your comments.

* Your Email:
   Your email address is not displayed.
* Comments:

This newsletter is closed to new comments.

Email Notification Options:
Notify me when a reply is posted to this comment
Notify me whenever a comment is posted to this newsletter