Posted on 12/28/2006 5:17:17 AM PST by GQuagmire
Development of property adjacent to power line tower easements is big biz for builders because that land is cheaper to obtain. 100' away from the lines and off the easement seems to be the norm around here. First time home buyers snap up these new homes as they are usually priced below competing subdivisions.
The guy is an idiot .. but also sounds like he MIGHT have a case to sue because the zoning board/township didn't prevent this house from being built and issued a permit
I do not want to condone stealing of power. Yes I understand that it is wrong. From a technical point of view, it is pretty amazing that usable amounts of power can be captured outside of the easement. Magnetic fields drop off rather quickly, I would think all you would get would be along the lines of a radio signal in strength.
I find this very difficult to believe; I'd be checking for "open ground" connections in the house wiring myself.
Rural legend.
Not to pile on, but power lines have associated magnetic and electrical fields. Insulation does not effectively confine the electric field, it only prevents current flow from the conductor. Insulating high voltage lines would not be practical.
Both the Electric and Magnetic fields associated with balanced power lines fall off as the inverse square of distance. Most of the energy stored in a power line is in the magnetic field (power lines look like inductors) but close to the lines the electrical field can be objectionable as well. If you stand close enough to a power line and hold a florescent bulb so that it glows, that's the effect of the electrical, not the magnetic field. This effect would occur even if the lines were DC.
The magnetic field couples to loops. If you were to fashion a transformer by looping some Romex around a piece of rebar and connecting the ends to an AC voltmeter, you would see a voltage that would fall as you moved further from the lines. The most common manifestation of the magnetic field in a power line is when they saturate the core of an automobile AM antenna, causing objectionable "static". (FM can be made more immune, it depends on the design.)
The health effects of these fields at the foot of the tower is probably neglible; we drive under power lines all the time. The right of way extents far enough from the lines so that interference with household electronic and electrical devices is not objectionable.
Does it really cost $360,000 ($290,000 + $79,000) to build a 1700 square foot home? That is around $212 a square foot. My home (purchased a few years ago only cost around $38 a square foot.
I am not in constructions, so this may be normal, but it would seem to me that someone was being taken for a ride on this one.
Number 2 might work on D.C.
Number 1 is my guess; I searched for two hours inside a room inside a hangar for a loose ground one day, I was able to measure 95VAC from the concrete floor mounted drill press leg to ground at the outlet and the fluorescent lamps had a mind of their own.
I finally tracked it down to a 4square box on the roof of the room that the neutral had gone open.
Couldn't find the break, so I simply ran 20 feet of #12 over to a J-box and connected neutral there.
Repowered the breaker and problem fixed.
That's why they're a hundred feet above ground.
Ouch! That hertz
Air.
Florescent bulbs glow when the energy stored in the gas is released. With AC the gas is constantly being charged and the energy is released. I'm not getting how a DC current could make a bulb glow, maybe just flash once.
An ignition coil is an autotransformer, the primary and secondary windings are indeed tied together.
A field isn't enough; one must break the lines through motion; close coupling of currents that are making and breaking contact will induce counter currents but this effect falls off on the square of the distance.
I've "pulled a building permit" in Massachusetts; most towns follow pretty much the same template. The plot plan shows utility easements, fire hydrants, leeching fields, etc. If there's any doubt about the building meeting set backs you need to have a licensed surveyor perform a survey to ensure that the building does not infringe before a permit is issued. The building inspector may have been negligent, the plot plan may have been defective. It sounds more like the prior, since the power company warned him not to build. During a visual inspection the power company must have noticed his infringement. The guy's just a dope.
The tower may be 27 feet but the wires are much higher than that overhead; this has all the markings of a building urban legend.
Think along the lines of capacitance, and inductive coupling...
But, building a home so close to the power company easements is not a smart investment.
$38 a square foot? Are you sh**ting me? Does that house have wheels? Electricity? Running water?
To put it into perspective, I just bought my house here and while it does have significant land (over an acre), the cost per square foot is still in the $140/sqft range. The one I just sold in CA went for roughly $430/sqft. Such is life.
And Professor, sometimes yes, sometimes no. I work at a power plant serving that grid, and some of the 345kv lines aren't nearly 30 feet high, even once they leave the switchyard. Even assuming a 45-degree angle, he's still barely 40 feet from energized conductors.
Yes, he should be checking for open grounds, but I can show you pole guy-wires which are firmly grounded over 100 feet from the nearest 345kv line which will still give you a nasty little bite under the right weather conditions.
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