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$4 Million Settlement Reached In Edison Stray Voltage Case
CBSLA.com ^ | March 19, 2013 12:02 AM

Posted on 03/19/2013 1:01:54 PM PDT by BenLurkin

click here to read article


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To: BenLurkin

Right after I moved into my new house I happened to be turning off my outside faucet barefoot while standing in a puddle that formed under the leaky hose.

Got one hell of a shock, called and complained to the electrician and he swears the system was fine when he did the work, ends up my electronic air cleaner on my furnace was all messed up they said.

I pounded a 20’ copper rod in the ground and ran a line to the water line just because anyway.


21 posted on 03/19/2013 1:29:14 PM PDT by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: piytar
I met a women who won't shop in one supermarket chain because they offer public WiFi. She claims it makes her sick. So she shops at one that doesn't offer it (i.e. doesn't have sign on the door) but still has a WiFi network for store use. I told her that these

use WiFi, but she didn't believe me.

22 posted on 03/19/2013 1:31:30 PM PDT by matt04
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To: thackney

ok that makes sense

but my question remains- isn’t the problem more in the wiring in her house?


23 posted on 03/19/2013 1:40:25 PM PDT by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
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To: glorgau

I bet it is a great place to find worms after a rain


24 posted on 03/19/2013 1:42:34 PM PDT by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
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To: Mr. K
isn’t the problem more in the wiring in her house?

Not in this case.

Mystery at Topaz substation
http://www.easyreadernews.com/35687/edison-stray-voltage/

...Brett Lacy of Web Electric in Redondo Beach. Lacy used a voltmeter and confirmed that the shower head was carrying a charge of about three volts. Perhaps even more disturbing, he checked the gas line outside the house and found an 12 volt charge.

Lacy turned off the home’s main breaker, and the voltage readings remained the same. He realized then the problem had nothing to do with the house itself. The earth under and around the home was carrying a charge.

25 posted on 03/19/2013 1:50:56 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: Mr. K

Also note, that eventually, they made repairs to the substation and modified the gas piping in the area.

Redondo Beach Residents Still Concerned About Stray Voltage
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/10/15/redondo-beach-residents-still-concerned-about-stray-voltage/

...

On Monday, crews from Southern California Edison, The Gas Company, and a corrosion control company out of Gardena worked in and around the Topaz Substation, which sits next to the Knob Hill neighborhood.

...

Edison said workers were installing a new grounding system at the substation, while The Gas Company said it’s replacing 3,000 feet of an 8-inch diameter steel gas line with 8-inch diameter plastic pipe.


26 posted on 03/19/2013 1:58:30 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: BenLurkin

Good Lord, don’t these morons have any idea what the word “electrocution” means?


27 posted on 03/19/2013 2:03:38 PM PDT by Fresh Wind (The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.)
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To: BenLurkin

Remember about twenty five years ago when “stray voltage” became a worry? Lots of con artists started plying the trade of claiming to “find” safe places in your home to put your child.

Others claimed that you could be hurt or killed by being under a high voltage power line.

Bunk.

A few years after this, a local man bought and sub divided an area right under a main power line running from the local power plant. He even made the power line service road the main street of this sub division.

There have been NO complaints from anyone living under those power lines. Ever!


28 posted on 03/19/2013 2:05:05 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (CLICK my name. See the murals before they are painted over! POTEET THEATER in OKC!)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

You are confusing stray voltage with EMF fields.

But then, so are some of the people in the article.

Regardless of the EMF talk, this home and others in the area had measurable voltage on the water piping and the gas line piping, even after shutting off the main breaker to the house.


29 posted on 03/19/2013 2:17:03 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: BenLurkin
Junk science makes sleazy plaintiff lawyers rich?

Not junk science at all. Stray voltage is real and it can cause problems.

I was on a 4 week jury trial several years ago where a local farmer was suing the power utility for the damage stray voltage was doing to his milk production.

It's as simple as this: All electricity generated and sent out the wire must come back to the generation point. How much of that returns via the neutral vs through the earth depends primarily on the condition of the neutral. Electricity ALWAYS follows the path of least resistance. In the testimony I heard, the utility itself indicated that something like 12% returned on the neutral, which meant that 88% returned through the earth. It;s been a long time and those numbers are probably not exact, but I was shocked (no pun intended) how much current was going through the earth. If the conditions are right, the path could indeed be down the metal of a water line which could indeed cause you issues if you became part of that circuit.

It's simple really.

30 posted on 03/19/2013 2:20:55 PM PDT by BlueMondaySkipper (Involuntarily subsidizing the parasite class since 1981)
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To: thackney

I have a circuit tester (the one with the little light bulb) that showed me I had a “HOT” line with the power off.

I later found that if I took a short piece of copper conduit and touched one end to the tester, the other end to the other wire on the tester, I still got a dim “hot” light even though there was no connection to anything electrical anywhere.

I still can’t figure that one out.


31 posted on 03/19/2013 2:27:14 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (CLICK my name. See the murals before they are painted over! POTEET THEATER in OKC!)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
I remember losing some electronics to step potential. The lightning strike was ~1000ft from the house (shattered tree). The pulse bridged the difference between the house ground and the cable ground.

Others claimed that you could be hurt or killed by being under a high voltage power line.

I think this is only a problem when there are other serious issues with the power lines. In my experience High Voltage lines make nice lightning rods.

32 posted on 03/19/2013 2:29:04 PM PDT by Fraxinus (My opinion, worth what you paid.)
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To: BlueMondaySkipper
Electricity ALWAYS follows the path of least resistance.

Good post, but to clarify this statement. Electrical current flow will follow ALL paths, it will be in reverse proportion to the resistance.

33 posted on 03/19/2013 3:46:33 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: thackney

too bad she didn’t plug into the ground and tap that power!


34 posted on 03/19/2013 4:13:12 PM PDT by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
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To: piytar

Its real. Maybe you should look it up before discounting it.


35 posted on 03/19/2013 4:44:08 PM PDT by Orange1998
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To: thackney

That reminds me of the famous problem: To find the resistance between opposite corners of a cube whose edges have a constant resistance. No pens, pencils, computers or calculators!

Hmmm, now how did that go?


36 posted on 03/19/2013 4:46:26 PM PDT by dr_lew
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