Shocking question!

Squizzy,
where are the phone lightning arrestors and what do they look like?

Zed,
The house does have a dedicated earth rod, a 2M long SS core, copper jacket jobbie. The copper piping is bonded to earth, which I believe is usually done to prevent any problems should the HWS short out.

Cliff,
will having more earth rods solve this, or is it simply a matter of not showering during lightning activity (I suspect the latter).

I doubt that I have a dodgy earth, we're on black sandy river loam that absorbs rain water very well and, like I said it's the wet season just now. It hasn't rained for about a week but the grounds still moist and it was pretty wet at the time of the incident. Is there any way of checking how good the earth is? From earth rod to the dirt I mean. :confused:

Mick

Mick, wherever the phone lines come into the house there should be a little grey box (called a Madison Box) or similar. Inside there "should" be a thingy what looks like a big fuse (old) or a thingy what looks like well a ..an insulated plastic rectangular thing with two wires coming out (newer). Sometimes its just a small round PVC terminal box with "T" (for terrible) on the screwed cover. A multi core heavy green earth wire should come out of the fuse thingy and go to ground. If the original installer was lazy they sometimes just run the earth to a nearby copper pipe relying on the rest of the earth system.If your still lost I'll post some piccy's.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

...Cliff,
will having more earth rods solve this, or is it simply a matter of not showering during lightning activity (I suspect the latter)....

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Nuh, lightning just lurves a good earth.... Stay out of the shower unless you wear a plastic raincoat, rubber gloves, gumboots & DEFINATELY NOT a foil hat. :D

Cliff,
thanks, maybe I shouldn't have been wearing the foil elbow length gloves :eek: , but they look so fetching :D

Squizzy,
thanks, for some reason we've got two of these, one out on the soffit sheeting (under the eaves) and one just a metre from there in the ceiling cavity. I'll check them out, but I don't recall seeing any wires other than telephone cabling coming out,

Mick

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Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

Squizzy,
thanks, for some reason we've got two of these, one out on the soffit sheeting (under the eaves) and one just a metre from there in the ceiling cavity. I'll check them out, but I don't recall seeing any wires other than telephone cabling coming out,

Mick

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Mick, wouldn't be the first place I've seen without lightning arrestors but they are probably in the system somewhere. They obviously have to be grounded to work. The one in the soffit is my best guess. Just unscrew the cover and have a gekko, don't lose the little O-ring:D The earth wire will generally run inside the cavity, sheathing, weatherboards whatever and appear somewhere at the foundations if it hasn't been hotwired to the rest of the house earth. Even if this is not the problem its worth having done right. A lightning strike on the phone lines, or house is bad enough without parrallelling to other systems.

Hi Mick

I did a bit of research and came up with some interesting websites:

1. Websites atht say never shower in an electrical storm:
http://www.ses.vic.gov.au/CA256AEA00...+Action+Guide~

http://www.sessa.asn.au/community_guides/lightning.html

2. Other references that say don't even shower if you have plastic pipes in a storm as some current can travel through the water.

But I believe most of these imply that there has been a direct strike, rather than electrical discharge.

I then found a document that may describe your problem - although it is US based and may not apply here due to differences in how houses are wired.
http://www.mikeholt.com/documents/st...-27-00Rev1.doc

Hope this helps

Are you sure you're not suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome? A mate of mine had it from playing guitar. He reached out one day to grab the door handle and it felt like an electric shock went up his arm. OK, it was just a thought :)

Heya Mick

I think that before you go to any expense, get the performance of your earth checked. I'm a civil engineer and not schooled on the sparky side of things, but I did once have to check the quality of the earth of some building piles - for the lightning earth on a highrise. The technician had a windy-up gismo (like the old telephones) that created a charge and measured the resistance - quick and simple. I reckon if you talk to your electricity supplier, or a local Civil or electrical consultancy, someone would be able to do this.
Or, could be 'wet season drinking arm carpaltunnelitis', in which case, make a plastic foily and change arms.http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ons/icon10.gif

Mick,

So far the discussion (apart from Silent's idea) has been either lightning or 240V based. Perhaps you didn't have time to notice, but did it feel like AC or DC? AC will give a tingling belt but DC gives a whack from my experiences.

Obviously if we can work out if it was AC or DC we can determine if it was due to static or something with your power.

If you got a belt then obviously there was a potential difference between the tap and whatever else you were touching. What was the other thing? (I am being serious here) was it the shower frame? Another Tap? ?????

If it was a metal shower frame then perhaps that it isn't earthed or it is pinched against a cable etc.

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Originally Posted by Wood Borer

If you got a belt then obviously there was a potential difference between the tap and whatever else you were touching. What was the other thing? (I am being serious here) was it the shower frame? Another Tap? ?????

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If the shower base is well wetted and on a concrete slab or a conductive frame then just touching a source would discharge through to the ground.

The good thing about living in the bush and having your own transformer pole the earth from the house runs back to the pole and is connected to the Country Energy earth.

Their earth runs three feet down into the ground and then runs 25 to 30 feet either way from the pole.

Modern TV's can give you a fair old belt too if you touch the antenna, I think its about 60VDC, live chassis are common and unpleasant to the touch, if there is an earth fault it is a possibility that it could come from here, although not knowing your layout not sure how it would arrive.
On mine the earth managed to get in contact with the guttering which gave me a fair old nudge when I went up to align the antenna.
Just another option to consider.

Just on the lightning topic - not Mick's problem specifically - as Cliff says, it's strange stuff. Many of the people & animals killed have not been hit but are killed by the potential difference between the points where their feet touch the ground - presumably only a matter of a few inches for humans. On the other hand, many people hit by lightning are relatively unharmed. Some years ago, a young lady was sitting communing with nature during an electrical storm on Narrowneck in the Blue Mtns. She sustained some minor burns on her skin, but the backside was blown out of her jeans. Presumably, that was where the lightning went to earth, although if I was hit by lightning, I might blow the asre out of my jeans too.

It's interesting to note that despite all these serious replies, we probably haven't been anymore useful than if we'd turned this into a pancake thread - but by crikey it's been informative (and fun) reading about it. I guess it just goes to show the moral strength of the aussie male :D

Richard

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Originally Posted by Barry_White

The good thing about living in the bush and having your own transformer pole the earth from the house runs back to the pole and is connected to the Country Energy earth.
Their earth runs three feet down into the ground and then runs 25 to 30 feet either way from the pole.

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Mick - weren't using the hair dryer by any chance ? As they say common sense isn't very common ...:D

All this has given me a couple of ideas. The first involves an electric fence unit and my neighbours copper water supply pipe - thanks everyone for contributing to such a wonderful idea. The second relates to looking into the pupose of the HV overhead supply cable that, for reasons unknow, runs underground from somewhere behind my property connecting to a small speaker type cable underneath the house? I first managed to find it with a crow bar digging a hole for the back fence - I thought it was a tree root up until it took half a dozen nudges from the crow-bar to break through. Are such huge earth wires normal?