I got shocked

You are most welcome, macswan. Sorry I failed to warn you about the content. The results of high voltage electric shock can be really horrific. What you saw on that page is about 1/20th of what I saw that made me want to pass out upon seeing it.

If any part of any tree might possibly get within ten feet of high voltage distribution lines, call in high voltage pros, is my opinion.

Stay well, macswan.

Tim
 
Wow! I hadn't thought about metal rimmed glasses causing damage. That is terrible.

I had an incident where a sprout got stuck between the tree and the line and started welding up a storm on the tree. I kicked it off and it left a small black mark on my foot. All I can say is that they don't pay line men enough. Oh look they even have smilies for this. T---------:frio:---------T :buitre: :cachetada:
 
I hate the power lines. I, for the first time, got shocked this summer. It was only a 4kv single phase distribution and felt slightly more shocking than a bee sting but it was enough for me to take a step back and make sure it didn't happen again. Same day, same climb my buddy was in the the pine across from me and got shocked twice before his tree actually caught on fire. Buried taps suck. My father got shocked real bad when I was a kid too I remember. He was cutting a large limb and it landed on the phase while he was holding it and he said he was actually unable to let go, that when he did the arc would bridge from his fingertips to the limb and pull them together. I remember the burn marks on the ends of his fingers. That was early on in his career. I can't wait to get out of the line clearance game.
 
A client told me a shocking story from when he was in high school. Picture a guy in his forties, with hair transplants that looked like a freshly plugged lawn. He even lifted his shirt to show some crazy looking scars from where the surgeons where removing dead tissue around his heart. He was cleaning gutters with a friend using an aluminum ladder. They went to move the ladder He was holding up the majority of the weight and the friend had a foot on the bottom rung. The top of the ladder slipped and hit a power line throwing his friend back. Unfortunately he was not able to let go of the ladder until the transformer blew. The doc said he would not have survived, had he not been a fit line backer. If I am not mistaken, his kids were all adopted.
 
TimBr said:
There are more links within the article I posted above, one of which is about a test called Complete Blood Count. I think this might be the testing I was thinking that they would do to a patient received into an emergency room for treatment and analysis of high voltage electric shock.

I do not know whether or not such a test would still be useful at this stage of the game in your case. That would be for a doctor to decide.

http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/complete-blood-count-cbc


Tim
Click to expand...

He's not gonna have a stroke son. And does your mom know you are on here getting the poor guy all worked up? Chill out.
 
Treezybreez said:
A client told me a shocking story from when he was in high school. Picture a guy in his forties, with hair transplants that looked like a freshly plugged lawn. He even lifted his shirt to show some crazy looking scars from where the surgeons where removing dead tissue around his heart. He was cleaning gutters with a friend using an aluminum ladder. They went to move the ladder He was holding up the majority of the weight and the friend had a foot on the bottom rung. The top of the ladder slipped and hit a power line throwing his friend back. Unfortunately he was not able to let go of the ladder until the transformer blew. The doc said he would not have survived, had he not been a fit line backer. If I am not mistaken, his kids were all adopted.
Click to expand...

That is a SHOCKING story lol .
 
paul phalloides said:
I hate the power lines. I, for the first time, got shocked this summer. It was only a 4kv single phase distribution and felt slightly more shocking than a bee sting but it was enough for me to take a step back and make sure it didn't happen again. Same day, same climb my buddy was in the the pine across from me and got shocked twice before his tree actually caught on fire. Buried taps suck. My father got shocked real bad when I was a kid too I remember. He was cutting a large limb and it landed on the phase while he was holding it and he said he was actually unable to let go, that when he did the arc would bridge from his fingertips to the limb and pull them together. I remember the burn marks on the ends of his fingers. That was early on in his career. I can't wait to get out of the line clearance game.
Click to expand...

I hope your dad is still around. He was fortunate to have survived a sustained high voltage contact. Believe it or not, one tenth of one amp's worth of electrical current is enough to kill a person. The typical Ground Fault Circuit Interrupting (GFCI) receptacle, the type you might see near a sink in your kitchen or bathroom, is set to open at the threshold where a person will start to feel a shock, which is about five or six one-thousandths of an amp. Or 0.005 amps. The amount that will kill you is 0.1 amps.

277 volts, which is the level of voltage used in commercial buildings for their lighting circuits, is strong enough to blow a hole in a person if they make the mistake of touching a live circuit and then to a solidly grounded object. Really painful, as reported to me by multiple individuals. So, unless you are fully suited up with high voltage gloves, etc., you ought not be anywhere near that kind of voltage. The fact that your buddy's tree caught fire and he got hit twice to me means that that tree should have been off limits to anyone but a man in an insulated bucket who was also fully suited up in a manner appropriate to the voltage.

Your employer is screwing up bigtime, in my opinion, when incidents like this happen. Your friend is lucky to be alive. If I were you guys, I'd be asking for the specialized equipment it takes to determine if high voltage is present, if it exists. I would imagine it would be like a really big tester on a pole, used to determine how far the electromagnetic field around a distribution line extends. This is a research project.

Stay safe.

Tim

P.S. Here's a link to an image of the kind of tool I'm talking about. I think the general term for the device is a "hot stick" high voltage detector.

http://www.bing.com/images/search/?...BCF3E80366F97046FA625F3E9C6CBCAEF&FORM=BRQONH

Ok, this turned out to be a link to a Bing image search results page, but I'm going to leave it alone, because besides showing the hot stick, in the hands of a man using it, the page shows all of the other kinds of expensive and specialized gear and arc flash resistant clothing used by the people that have to deal with high voltage on a daily basis. To send young guys up into trees within range of high voltage distribution lines with no protection just to me seems criminal, literally.

End of rant. Thanks for putting up with me.
 
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A couple of thoughts about this thread:

Why the concern about both phases? As I understand your process, macswan, you were phase to ground. Phase-to-phase increases voltage between phases but not phase-to-ground. You’ll also only get a voltage increase phase-to-phase on Wye configuration but not on Delta.

High voltage. Don’t ignore amperage. Voltage may turn you to ash in a millisecond but amperage will cook you from the inside out. That house drop/service is as bad as that “high voltage” primary.

Bare conductors. There are no fully insulated primary in our system that’s electrically insulated except our underground and some aerial cable. We have weather-coated but that’s not “insulated”.

Shielding. OSHA regulations make no allowances for a facility that’s insulated as far as clearances go. If you are unqualified, its 10 feet for 15kv or less, insulated or not. That’s you and your equipment must stay 10 feet from that conductor. That includes that new fiberglass pole. The pole must be dielectrically tested prior to its use and even if it has been, it still can not be used with 10’ (15kv or less) if the operator has not been qualified per the regulations.

The “path”. I would wager that you became an integral part of the conductor to ground as we copper-tops are better at moving electricity than wood. I’d imagine your spikes in the xylem/phloem had something to do with it.

Lastly, you, macswan, have not recovered from your exposure to electricity, yet. Don’t respond to my post; just get yourself to a hospital. Think of your family and get to a medical facility now. You have no idea as to the extent of internal damage to your body. Only a medical team can.

Arborists and NASCAR drivers – always laughing about their near-death experiences. The difference is NASCAR implements immediate and permanent change after a fatality whereas tree people just keep dying.
 
Very high, non-lethal voltage, low amperage is the basis for the TASER. It is the amperage, or current, that kills a person.

The analogy of voltage and current to water has always been helpful to me. If you have a hose pushing water out the end of it, the force with which the water comes out the end of the hose equates to the electrical voltage in a system.

The size of the hose, its diameter, equates to the amount of current. A four inch fire hose at lower pressure is likely to pass much more water per second than a tiny garden hose at a higher pressure. In this analogy, it would be the total volume of water that kills you. The force with which it comes out the end of the hose is not the thing that kills you.

I guess to further the analogy, you'd have to be standing in a huge vat with no way out. A small garden hose pushing water in at high pressure would worry one less than a 4" hose that is pushing a much higher volume of water per minute, even if it appeared to be coming out of the hose at a lower pressure than the tiny little garden hose.

Here's a link to some information about TASERS and what various levels of exposure to electricity do to a person.


https://pdmselfdefense.com/self-defense-weapons-blog/stun-guns-post-featuring-barracuda-stun-gun/
 
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