- #36
Adder_Noir
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Absolutely if you've got them all coiled up together on the floor. It's basically now become an inductor if that's the case and a back e.m.f. will be present. No shielding means it has no protection from this whatsoever.
business man said:Is it possible that there could be current running in the ground? We noticed that some of our conduits had current!
Adder_Noir said:What you said about testing each and every appliance until you find the potentially guilty one is exactly right. Most of the time that's how we end up sourcing electrical faults, by process of elmination.
It really is important for you to find out if you're still getting currents flowing through conductors when your building is isolated. This is a must. Call an electrician out as soon as is realistically possible and see if he can tell you if these disturbances are still present when isolated.
That makes sense
QUOTE]Do you have any neighbours nearby who might be using high current appliances? One further possiblity is that a local business or domestic property or something is feeding their return path through an Earth rather than neutral which runs into your property. Again it's just another possibility. The more suggestions you have ready when you've got a qualified person there the better [/
My neighbors are mostly distribution companies, so this might be ruled out, they do not use big machinery. But what if this main feed to the city is improperly grounded??
Adder_Noir said:Absolutely if you've got them all coiled up together on the floor. It's basically now become an inductor if that's the case and a back e.m.f. will be present. No shielding means it has no protection from this whatsoever.
Adder_Noir said:It's more a case of, what would happen if this main feed were not properly insulated from earth/ground. This would cause current loss at the substation and it would be obvious to the power company. If the feed is responsible for as much as it is suggested that it is then big problems would be occurring by now and the power company would likely already be all over it. I suspect it isn't the problem to be honest.
The only time an issue would arise when the main feed substation were not properly grounded would be during Earth fault conditions at your property. This would mean the Earth fault path would have to be greatly extended to the next Earth rod at the next nearest substation. This would lengthen the return path and lower the Earth conductor current.
QUOTE]I'm still betting on a faulty appliance or a wiring fault, i.e. an Earth in a neutral or vice versa by mistake [/
I will be all over this one tomorrow. Thanks
Any other comments? At this point I need to try everything.
business man said:Fortunately one of the guys was curious when he found out that breakers in our main service were tripping with little or no load, so they may want to investigate this further today.
business man said:I was told that they are not RCD's, but in fact standard over current breakers, apparently not connected to neutral.
Could these breakers also trip for the same reason?
The B-field from a transmission line points, not towards the line, but tangentially away from it. Furthermore, I know of no compass that has a response time below the 16 ms needed to detect an oscillating 60Hz field. A typical compass will not respond to a rapidly oscillating field; it will settle along the direction of the static field.LURCH said:Just a suggestion, but do you have a compass? If you take it just outside your building and it points to the power main instead of pointing North, then there's a good chance that the main is indeed the source of your woes.
Danger said:Blackadder;
I'm totally out of my league here, but I'm just going to try to clarify something. What you call an RCD seems to be, by your description, what we call a GFI (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor). Is that correct?
Emicro said:I work for a company that manufactures, installs and maintains electron microscopes. In order to determine if there is a lot of vibration or EMI we contract out to other companies. If this problem persists, there is a company called TCM that specializes in detection and cancellation of vibration and electromagnetic field. http://www.techmfg.com/index.htm?gclid=CNq8s8TAuIgCFTosGAodOlG4zA
business man said:Tom, who you should know by now, was already thinking that the two lines running next to each other, should be fine no matter how much current was passing through them as long as they are balanced. His most recent theory is that when they are, for some reason out of balance, is when it causes our EMF problem.