Remarkable electric shock I experienced

[R Blankenship]

I experienced an electrical shock while replacing an A/C Fan Coil's 120vac, single phase motor that was above the ceiling grid in an office, while I stood on a fiberglass ladder and having no other voltage, neutral, nor ground point in the electrical shock -It was severe enough to lock me to it and leave blisters on entry and exit points. Here are the details: I was time constrained and in a hurry; and convinced of the concept of the "bird on a high tension wire" not getting shocked, and not troubling with turning off the breaker NOT putting on gloves, I began to strip the Stranded (THHN) "live" wire feed to make the necessary connection to the motor lead, using a wire stripper designed to strip solid copper insulated wire -this requires a little extra "umph" to pull the insulation off the stranded copper wire; so holding the Wire Stripper in my right hand (index Finger touching its metal, uninsulated portion of the Wire Stripper) and my left hand holding the "live" (120vac) wire by its insulated covering, I used my left Thumb against the Wire Stripper for the "umph" to pull the insulation away; at which point I compressed the Stripper to cut the insulation and pressed my thumb against the Wire Stripper to pull the wire apart from the end of the now stripped insulation; at which moment, I became hung to an electric current traveling through my Hands, Arms and Chest. I thought of walking down the ladder, to free myself; but thought I might NOT be able to break loose; so I slung my legs out side ways to cause the ladder to tip out and I fell to the floor, landing unconscious but freed of the shock! It taught me that a single voltage can cause death by electrical shock and the "bird on the wire" is a "false flag" concept.... My thought (as to how that was possible) is that the left Thumb and right index (less than an inch apart on the wire stripper) set up a capacitor circuit and my arms and chest became the dielectric!?!

 

[westward10]

 

[timhoward]

Finally, something that makes sense!

 

[westward10]

It was lineman, it is going round in my head now but what a great tune.

 

[nicebutdim]

It was lineman, it is going round in my head now but what a great tune.

Can't help wondering if it was a smooth sinusoidal or rectified signal that allowed Campbell to 'hear her through the wire'...

 

[westward10]

Is he still on the line?

 

[R Blankenship]

It is nothing to do with clean or dirty AC, or harmonics or saw tooth wave forms or bouncing pulses etc. It's just the well understood electrical circuit in which current flows.

I suspect you will still keep repeating the same thing over and over again though until someone agrees with you. I suspect this won't happen.

Et tu Brutus.

 

[mainline]

Tim Horward, my apology for taking so long before responding. In my early career a Linenan shared with me his experiencing grabbing with both hands a single "live", in operation, 69kv line while standing in his bucket-Truck's extended, isolated bucket -He said that it was vibrating..., but made no remark of whether it felt warm.... Your above pgotograph shows a higher voltage transmission line -maybe 138kv.

Here's what I concluded as to why an office's single 120vac cut but live wire could set up a current through my hands, arms, and chest..., but the man with both hands on a high tension wire and sitting on a helicopter's platform does not have a delta-V nor current flow through his hands, arms and chest: High Tension wires have clean sinusoidal AC voltage produced by a Generato, transformed and transmitted through transformers; where as in offices operating all sorts of electrical devices these end-use equipment can set up harmonics and/or have partially failed or poorly designed input rectifier-transformers circuits that can "ping-back", impress, induce multiple frequency sinusoidal harmonics, or sawtooth, square wave, or othet repetitive spike, variant voltage on a single line -And this is what hung me.... You could take a bird or a man sitting below a helicopter of a line with thes delta-V's and they too would be shocked by current flowing through their hands (or bird's feet) and Body.

This concept was not realized by me until this experience; although, I knew about harmonic that computers can set up and cause undue heating on "live" wires.

I felt a similar experience in my local store yesterday.
I pressed the usual buttons, but then as the costa coffee machine started to fill the cup, I noticed that the price had gone up again.
The shock was terrible.