I think I will try the flat earth concept first, because in practice I can not put in an earthing stake. However as the gas pipe is earthed that should be a true earth. If not, I can not do a lot about it and I hope the small differential will not negate the benefits.
Earth checking for grounding
- Thread starter S87134
- Start date
I think I will try the flat earth concept first, because in practice I can not put in an earthing stake. However as the gas pipe is earthed that should be a true earth. If not, I can not do a lot about it and I hope the small differential will not negate the benefits.
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In some ways.
You'll probably need to wrap it around a few times (unless you have very small wrists), and you don't need to plug it in.
Probably should take it off when done.
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Thank you everyone for your replies so far.
I am trying to understand if my flat is properly earthed. The man at this website recommends a number of checks, one would be to take a reading in volts between earth and neutral. he recommends it should read <2v, I do not know if his advice would apply to the UK. He is in India.
http://www.diyable.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=49
I tried his tests in my flat in the UK and saw 0v (it flashed between 0 and 1v) reading between earth and neutral. The Neutral to live is 243v (same as live to earth). He explains the earth to neutral reading should be deducted from the live to neutral so as to get back to 240v.
ricicle wrote earlier:
Your earth in the flat could be several volts above true earth so what are you trying to achieve by sleeping on a mat that may not be tied to mother earth ? Do you want to be at one with true/mother earth or at one with the electrical earth?
Does any one know if the apparent lack of a value reading between earth and neutral is indicative of anything?
Robin
I am trying to understand if my flat is properly earthed. The man at this website recommends a number of checks, one would be to take a reading in volts between earth and neutral. he recommends it should read <2v, I do not know if his advice would apply to the UK. He is in India.
http://www.diyable.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=49
I tried his tests in my flat in the UK and saw 0v (it flashed between 0 and 1v) reading between earth and neutral. The Neutral to live is 243v (same as live to earth). He explains the earth to neutral reading should be deducted from the live to neutral so as to get back to 240v.
ricicle wrote earlier:
Your earth in the flat could be several volts above true earth so what are you trying to achieve by sleeping on a mat that may not be tied to mother earth ? Do you want to be at one with true/mother earth or at one with the electrical earth?
Does any one know if the apparent lack of a value reading between earth and neutral is indicative of anything?
Robin
Yes, possibly a TN-C-S earthing system where there's a single PEN (protective earth (PE) and neutral (N)) so both are at the same potential.
I've not read the whole thread so apologies if you've already stated the earthing arrangements.
If it's coming in at high impedance I'm not so sure it is an extraneous service and would need to be bonded.
This is where it gets complicated. It would be high impedance if there was a resistor in series between earth rod and the lead into the building. But that would mean the "harmfull electricity" in the bedroom would capacitively couple itself to the lead into the building and only a little of it could go through the resistor to disappear into the ground. The rest would follow the lead and find the mat.
Theory also suggests the mat under the person may increase currents flowing in the body due to radio frequency signals. It would need a complete full spectrum Faraday cage ( or conductive sleeping bag with hood ) to prevent current being induced in the flesh from the thousands of radio and TV broadcast signals that will be there in the bedroom. The earthed mat under the body will increase the currents that these radio signals create in the body. ( Yes I know they are extremely small and nothing like those in a beef burger in a microwave oven )
That did make me laugh as something similar had dawned on me after writing it, and yes you're correct. Even if you were to capacitively bypass the rod resistor it'd start to put you into the same boat.
I was reading the paper on health benefits linked to earlier in the thread. It isn't very well presented and leaves a lot to the unknown. Not in the least the conditions under which the research was done.
Page 2. The paper mentions people sleeping better whilst connecting themselves to water pipes etc. Note that this is in the 1920s. The earth connection then may have been substantially cleaner than it may be today. One of its main observations is out of date by 90 years.
One of the major problems in conducting research into what could be very subtle effects is the need to encorporate a massive number of variables into the data. If you were looking for sleep improvements by grounding then, to my mind, you'd need to also record a plethora of other variables - like diet, gender, age, genetic influences, occupation, stress levels, chemical exposures, whether you're getting it or not, the list goes on. Only then could you even hope to begin to isolate what could be effects due to grounding. Research these days is seldom so well done due to the cost of it. On the odd occasions is has been done well it's usually been the source for groundbreaking work and then drawn on for a long time afterwards.
So to stand this all on its head, and look from another angle......
Susceptibility -
In my experience different people are sensitive to different degrees to the electrical world around them. For instance - I can't usually 'feel' a voltage of below 50volts DC with dry hands. A friend of mine can reliably feel if a 5v DC supply is on or off. I don't have any problems with accumulating static charge which is handy in the electronics world. I also don't wear man made fibres. An electronics colleague is terrible for accumulating static and has to be kept away from the semiconductors. Although antistatic protection is the order of the day for serious work.
I was once called to another friends house after she'd just moved in and she suspected a fault with a light switch. It was the only one with a metal front on it. She said it felt like it was vibrating. The switch was fine but when she said that her new iron felt 'furry' I began to form a picture that it was maybe the waveshape of the mains she might be sensing. It wasn't a new thing apparently, it's just that these were particularly prominent to her.
So I set up some tests and generated low level electrical and magnetic fields typically sub 100Hz. The magnetic fields she was indifferent about, although it was a terribly scientific investigation. However the voltage field between two metal 12"Sq plates about 12" apart she reacted strongly to. She could reliably tell me roughly what the waveshape was by putting her hand between the plates, and she couldn't of been aware what the shape was. She described a slow square wave as pulsating, a triangular wave as 'spikey' and the slow sine wave she thought was 'smooth & flowing' & 'quite nice' where as the others had been unpleasant to her. I'd started at 20Volts thinking she'd have problems sensing anything, but was amazed when she could still do it at 1volt and below. She also has Synesthesia. The mind boggles.
So it makes me think, is it specifically an 'earth' (whatever that is) potential that's important or the absence of a voltage/magnetic field?
As your paper mentions
""This, in turn, prevents the 60 Hz mode from producing an AC electric potential at the surface of the body and from producing perturbations of the electric charges of the molecules inside the body.'"
As Benard has mentioned a Farady cage will assist in blocking a voltage field. If it's magnetic ones you need to block you might need Mumetal pyjamas, and that could get expensive.
Maybe interesting to investigate? My money would be on either the absence of a field, or a small static one.
Has anybody here ever measured what is between mains earth and an independent 'earth' rod? I would guess the results are likely to be quite variable, but it might demonstrate the point of the mains earth not being clean. At some point I'll do it, having access to a couple of rods that have been installed for sometime which can be safely unhooked from the systems.
Anybody any thoughts on what they'd like to know?
I'd like to know in relation to what the Earth is at negative potential.
Hmmn. Me too. I seem to remember from a dim & distant past physics lesson there being a derivation of it. But as you say. Relative to what? I don't have any test leads that long unfortunately.
I've had the buzzy or furry feel from metal lightswitches. Doesn't everyone?
Not every one does . There are two reasons why some people do not.
[1] some people are not as sensitive to electrical potentials as others
[2] in some houses the electrical safety "earth" really is the same potential as true ground so the person whose is capacitively coupled to true ground actually is at the same potential as the electrical safety "earth" to which the front plate of the switch is connected.
If the buzzy feeling wasn't down to a fault and you can regularly sense electrical phenomena, out of interest, what other phenomena can you sense JohnD?
BONDED not earthed. How many times.
- An infinite number with bernard, I'm afraid.
- About the same number of times I have to make it clear that Part P has nothing to do with notification, and that non-notifiable work is still governed by Part P, before people get it.
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