ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Electrified house in Mass

This seems to be the most extensive news article on the house: http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2006/12/28/news/news4.txt

I wonder if bonding beyond that normally required by the NEC would solve most or all of the problems, and I wonder how the homeowner and workers managed to ignore this issue until the electrical inspector showed up.

It might very well have been a time of year thing, or perhaps all of the construction was at night when line currents were lower

-Jon

Photos

This first one shows the lines and insulators themselves. I have no idea what voltage this is, maybe some of you will.



This next picture shows the home, sorry about the glare. Notice the access to the home is the dirt road under the lines.



This next photo is the best I could do to show the lines and the home. It is my best guess that at it's closest the line is about 45' from the home.



In this next photo I am standing almost in front of the house looking back up the driveway, the home is over my left shoulder as I am taking this photo.

You can see my van in the driveway, it's about 800' behind van to the public road.

You can also see a camper where I suspect the HO is living, notice his metal camper is much closer to the lines than his home. I did not knock on his door as this was early morning.





This last photo shows the base of the newer towers. Two sets of lines are without a doubt new, however they could have been replacing an older set of smaller lines. Many of the supports further down the line are all wood, perhaps they are changing out the wood for the metal? In any case you can see the earth has recently been disturbed under each of these new metal poles.





[This message has been edited by iwire (edited 01-02-2007).]

Great shots, Bob. Interesting that the driveway runs through both sets of transmission lines. And you're right, the camper does look like it's closer to the lines than the house is. Wonder if the same electrical hazards exist in the camper too.

Bob, I really appreciate your efforts. The more we look at this tale, the screwer it gets.

Google Earth is an amazing thing. Looking at what they say is the adderss, I see something well within the 'clear cut' area under the power lines. In this dated sat pic, the only dirt road looks to be one placed there to access the poles. I wonder if that's this guy' "driveway?" There certainly doesn't look like anywhere else that can be 800 ft. from that busy road.

I note another home across Lindsey, quite close to the poles, and with a pool. Likeiwstm there are a number of other homes in the ares ... most notably at Pollis & Pridemark Streets, that are quite close to the lines ... almost under them, in fact. I wonder if these folks have any problems.

A camper parked under the lines seems to suggest that the complaint is bunk.

I note in the Sun article that the problem was 'discovered' at the time of the inspection. If that is the case, we can only conclude that this guy was quite willing, up to that point, to palm this house off on some unsuspecting buyer.

There are just too many things in this tale that stink. If nothing else, it appears that Zagami was quite happy with the town officials .... up to the point that one actually did his job!

Reno, I respectfully disagree with you. What I believe happened was this. There are no laws that guard against building where this house was built. If there were, then the town would have never issued the permit to build there.

Now, some have pointed out that there are POCO rules that forbid this kind of building within the easement. That may or may not be true. If there are rules like this than the township that issued the permit should have known this and apparently they didn't.

IMO, this is an issue between the township and the national grid and the victim here is the HO.

The easement should have been recorded on the property deed, but it is very unlikely that this would show up when they got there permit. I know around here they do not look at the deed before the permit is issued. I would expect that the easement was recorded and the owner did not look at it before building. It should have shown up when he got a loan for the project as the banks normally do look at the deed restrictions.
Don

I'm not doubting what you're saying, Don, but what you are saying is that in your area the bank who gives the loan for the house should have picked this up since they review the deed of the house before giving out the loan?

i'm begining to belive i smell a rat! just how do you electrify a doorknob? we have some power lines here that look similar to that,they leave the power plant,not sure exactly where they go,but would bet they go to a switch yard to feed various substations.look like that camper would really lite ya up. it's all metal! i belive i would have to have some proof with a volt meter. i think this fella is trying to take some one for a ride. but stranger things have happened. if i see one of the guys from the power company i will ask about the voltage.

[This message has been edited by circuit man (edited 01-02-2007).]

Bob, thank you for the pics.

I'm no expert on this stuff, but a couple of things strike me as odd.
The FD closed the place off upon their "Hot Stick" registering a reading. I taped my little Greenlee non-contact to the truck mirror today. It looks like we'd better condemn SoCA. It sung like a bird on and off all over town.
I've got an Ideal tester that is more sensitive than the Greenlee. It will go off 3-1/2' from my TV (Greenlee 2').
Also my high impedance digital meter will register about 6 volts with one lead on a grounded cover plate screw, and the other held in the air a foot or so from the TV.

I parked this morning for a minute on aptly named "Edison Ave", directly under a criss-cross/mish mash of power lines, including 500KV lines.
I was able to get 22V from the truck bed to a 400 watt core&coil ballast I had. As soon as I connected a 20K resistor across the leads as well, the voltage went to 0. I was unable to get close to get a reading to any of the "Happy Cows"

I'd like to see them do the voltage from the sink to the receptacle deal with an analog meter



[This message has been edited by electure (edited 01-02-2007).]

"It looks like we'd better condemn SoCA. It sung like a bird on and off all over town."

Scott, we already know you have Goths all over town, it's SoCa!

I am sure you can tie it down, and bring the reading to 0, I think the real danger here is the presence of the field, and what you discovered, is the pollution we can't see, the fields all around us, from power lines, cell towers, and even the ballast in our kitchen fixture at home, it's the prolonged exposure to these fields, that we don't know what the effects on our bodies will be, controlled tests have been done, and published, just to be discarded as junk science, or urban legend.

We want to continue to grow our economy, and provide new jobs, and have homes with the latest gadgets, addressing the invisible problems of EMF polution, would only slow our growth, just think of it as electrical exhaust fumes, and don't live near the tail pipe!

At least we know why the cows are happy, their brains are fried, from grazing under the tension lines.

[This message has been edited by LK (edited 01-02-2007).]