Posted on 12/28/2006 5:17:17 AM PST by GQuagmire
A North Attleboro man faces financial ruin because he built a new home so close to dangerous high-voltage transmission lines that fluorescent bulbs inside the house light up without even being plugged in. The electric currents running through the two-story home are considered so potentially harmful that the town’s fire department has strung “caution” tape around the house while an electrical inspector has refused to issue a final permit out of fear someone might get electrocuted. The home’s metallic door knobs and exterior shingles give off mild electric jolts when touched, while flowing currents are strong enough to light up fluorescent bulbs on their own, the homeowner and experts agree. “I spent everything I had,” said Chris Zagami, who invested up to $70,000 of his own money and took out a $290,000 construction loan to build the 1,700-square-foot home just 27 feet from giant overhead 345,000-volt transmission lines owned by National Grid. Zagami, 30, whose bank is now threatening to call in its loan, blames the fiasco on others, including the town of North Attleboro for issuing him a building permit and National Grid for allegedly constructing one transmission tower years ago too close to his property.
“Financially, I’m so in over my head that it’s ridiculous,” said Zagami, a phone-company technician who grew up only 50 yards away from his new home on Lindley Street in North Attleboro.
The building inspector who issued the permit no longer works for the town. John Rhyno, a town selectman, said he wants to know why the town issued a building permit in the first place, though he maintained there’s nothing in state statutes that sets guidelines for building homes close to transmission lines.
“You would think common sense would have prevailed” before construction started, he said of everyone involved, including Zagami.
A spokeswoman for National Grid, which owns the transmission lines, said Zagami has no one to blame but himself for proceeding with construction last year without getting the company’s permission.
Debbie Drew, the spokeswoman, said Zagami built his home on National Grid’s easement and ignored its repeated warning to stop.
Zagami, who is single and whose now largely completed home sits abandoned, said his surveys show that National Grid actually built one transmission tower off of its easement years ago.
“My life is being destroyed,” said Zagami, of the financial crunch he’s now facing. “I was trying to live the American dream and now I’m getting killed.”
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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.