Electrical safety nazi gets shocked by his own bus

[Sean]

This morning I got a 400+ volt AC shock by touching my bus and a metal pipe at a dump station at the same time.  It woke me up enough to want to share it with other large-metal-RV owners (such as bus nuts).  The whole story is posted over on my blog here:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/07/shocking-experience-at-dump-station.html

-Sean
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com

[John316]

Sean,

That is an incredible story. I am going to have to reread it again, just to make sure that I understand it.

Thanks for the post.

God bless,

John

[MattC]

Induction, I wouldn't have thought that at all.  LOL, I'd have been one of those, "I'll be damned! Whar did dat come from?" folks. 

Glad you didn't end up a statistic. 

[Dallas]

Sean,

Damn!

I have a friend who was operating a 44' dump trailer that got caught in the power lines. He did as we were all taught and jumped as far as possible with feet together. Unfortunately, this was one of the 200KV lines coming in to a mine site.

He now has no palms on his hands and the soles of his feet are scar tissue so far in that you can dig in with a knife and hit bone without his feeling it. I've seen him do it.

People on this board worry about propane in a coach, but I've seen just as deadly effects from our friend, "Reddy Electric"

[niles500]

Good thing you weren't wearing your tin foil hat 

[bobofthenorth]

I'm with Matt - I'd be standing there saying "duh - where'd that come from?"  Although I have heard of farmers stealing power from overhead lines by carefully positioned fencing.  I always thought that was a myth though.

[Tenor]

Wow!  I didn't know that those transmission lines created such a field!  Did you warn someone?  Thanks for that VERY helpful post!

Glenn

[MCI-RICK]

Sean,

Great story.  That's good info to keep in mind.  As Mattc said, I'm glad you didn't become a statistic.  Besides, you put a lot of work into that turbo and it needs to be broken in.   Just kidding.  Glad your okay.

Rick

[Sojourner]

EMF (Electro Magnetic Field) is in the work. Like a transformer...bus is a core to the high power line.

If you had a am radio on while under high power line....it will be buzz very loud instead of low level buzzing sound of most overheads.

Depend how high the voltage is and how far from the line...you can have lightning between coach's roof to line if you grounded the coach well.

That interesting to learn it was about 400v.

There should be a warning sign...no metal bus and truck van over 10 feet allowed.

Sojourn for Christ, Gerald

[NewbeeMC9]

Are you sure it wasn't from eating that electric eel sushi




EMF, the downside of a roof raise,  guess well have to ad that to the list of considerations.


Wow, that coulda been bad, thanks for the reminder to look up and sharing your learning.

[Airbag]

I have heard farmers in the old days would run long runs of wire along under the high tension lines and power there farm houses with the EMF. 

[Ed Hackenbruch]

 Me and electricity do not get along, if there is a way to get shocked i will find it even if people say '' you can't get shocked off of that".  4 or 5 years ago i worked on a couple of substation expansion jobs in the Yuma area. The first day on the job the boss told me he did not have a shirt, (orange) for me but would have one the next day and told me not to catch on fire. Being kind of a smartass  i asked him if that was possible and he said yes.   Turns out the shirts are treated to be fire resistant. Sometimes we were working directly under lines with different amounts of voltage at different heights and sometimes we were off to the side. I learned very quickly to jump on and off of the machines i was running instead of just stepping on and off while holding on to the grab bars. In some places just picking up a hammer or piece of rebar or even just nails off of the ground would give you a good little zap. Other places you had to wear rubber gloves and even then you could get shocked sometimes.  It was fun to get a new guy on the job and tell him about this and see that he did not believe you........and then watch him the first time he grabbed something and got zapped.

[Tony LEE]

Using a high-impedance digital multimeter to measure the potential of a totally floating lump of metal near other live equipment is likely to result in very misleading readings. Load the metal mass down to ground with a 1 MegOhm resistor and then see what you read.

[bevans6]

loading the metal mass with a 1 meg resistor would probably almost completely dissipate the charge.  It would be really interesting to do that and read the current level.  Back in the day we had to physically ground our vehicles before refueling, the first reason was static but the secondary reason may well have been this sort of thing.  Having a ground strap for the dump station would have eliminated this, yes? 

My house is almost directly under a 48KV line, two three phase feeds.  Maybe I will do some experiments!  free inductive power, maybe charge a battery or run some driveway lights!  I wonder how big a coil i'd need to get a couple of watts out of it!

Brian

[rv_safetyman]

Sean, you were kind enough (? ) to have the turbo failure to make me feel better about my engine problems.  I hope you don't expect me to reciprocate

Jim