On 08/26/2015 12:02 PM, tony duell wrote:
Yup, in the first house I owned, i had a "computer room".
Whereas now you have a 'computer house' ?
The previous owner had done some retrofits and installed an
outlet in a closet. I plugged a printer into that outlet,
and my computer (S-100, CP/M) into another on the opposite
wall. Some strange things happened, some chips got blown, I
didn't know why. Then, finally, I put my hand on the
printer and something connected to the computer and got a
You were very lucky. An arm-to-arm shock is about the most
dangerous you can get. That (of course) is why you keep your
left hand behind your back when working on anything with
high votlages.
I guess I have good heart circuitry, as I have gotten this
type of shock a number of times, without any terrible thing
happening. Always when totally unexpected, as I was not
AWARE that what I'd be doing had any shock potential.
big shock. Quickly investigating, I found a Romex staple
had been driven through the Romex, severing the safety
ground and tying it to the hot! This was back before outlet
testers were common items. Well, that explained some blown
chips, etc.
OUCH!. I've seen some dubious wiring in my time (and just becasue
somebody has the right bit of paper to say they are a qualified
electrician does not mean they do good wiring in my experience!)
but that is lethal. Don't they test wiring after it's installed? Over here
you are certainly supposed to (and a megger would pick that up
even if the short wan't quite there yet).
Oh, YEAH, this place was later found to have some REALLY
dubious wiring, that must have been missed by several
inspectors. They had a fire there quite some time before I
moved in. There was burned wiring in a basement ceiling
with the Romex outer jacket melted off, and the inner wires
deteriorated. They had a feed for some baseboard heaters
with 30 A breakers that had been re-routed to ordinary
outlets. This was all presumably done by a previous owner.
Well, we KNOW why they had a fire, don't we?
I've never met a residential electrician that would even
know the WORD "megger". Certainly, they don't use them to
check house wiring.
Jon
