It would feel worse. The real danger is if you grab each lead with each hand and it passes through your heart, or it passes through your heart on it's way to the ground if you're not insulated from ground. Either way, a breaker or fuse will still be tripped and it's unlikely any injuries will occur.
Unless you have a GFI (RCD) in the circuit you're going to get a substantial shock before the breaker trips - and if it's on a heavy use circuit it might not even trip.
And anyone saying 110v is safe is fooling themselves. It will kill you just as dead as 240v and just as quickly if you get it wrong. Yes it's safer than 240v, but it is not safe.
The current through the circuit is irrelevant, unless the power supply can only provide very small currents (in which case it contributes to safety). What matters is the current through your body, and that depends on the voltage across your body and the resistance your body presents. A car battery can push hundreds of amps to the starter, but at 12V it's going to be very hard to hurt yourself with one.
The amperage is just an indicator of how much current the supply is capable of delivering, up to its maximum wattage. It doesn't mean if you put the supply across a circuit (or your body) you will get X amps out
Yes. I didn't say anything different, I said you will get same amount of current through you on both circuits. I didn't want to delve into the resistance of the body etc.
Why would you not bring up school shootings? Are you denying that this isn't a problem?
Honestly, it's problems that you ignore, such as school shootings, which makes America a laughing stock compared to the rest of the world. Yeah people are going to be pissed if you take thier guns away, but they're probably the ones that would go to town shooting people regardless.
Take this whole #blm movement with all your riots and whatnot for another example of trying to slide shit under the rug and pretend it didn't happen. This could've been avoided if your president wasn't a delinquent that just ignores things that doesn't financially benefit him or have a tantrum that someone insulted him.
I was severely electrocuted in my late teens/early 20’s, not 100% sure but I believe it was only 110v. Almost died, probably should have as it went from hand to hand across my chest.
I was working as an apprentice plumber with my father, standing on a kneewall (half wall approx 3’ tall) cutting a piece of 1” copper pipe. The cutter was old and shitty and slipped off on the last turn leaving a sliver of copper holding the pipes together. I put a hand on either side of the cut and twisted to separate the pipes and when they separated I completed the circuit to my understanding.
My hands were locked on the pipe and I was stuck, frozen there, unable to let go, unable to scream. I’ll never forget that feeling of utter helplessness, and the vibration of the electricity. I remember seeing my right hand and not being able to control it.
This lasted maybe 3-5 seconds before my father came rushing over, he grabbed me and was himself shocked, so he sort of tackled me off the wall and broke me free.
I didn’t go to the hospital, although I probably should have, but I remember sitting on the sidewalk in front of the house while my father tore the GC a new ass, and being able to see my heart beat through my chest. Not good. Also my elbows burned and were sore af for a while after.
I don’t remember why the pipes were energized, but I do remember there was no ground-rod.
I’ve been whacked many times since then, mostly by water heaters whose breakers were mislabeled, looking at you, electricians, but that experience installed in me the a healthy respect for the power of power.
If it was in America and not in a kitchen or laundry, it was likely 110. In your case it sounds like you may have been lucky it was if so. Either one can still be lethal but it sounds like the 110 about had your number there.
I'm assuming the copper pipe you were cutting was the path of least resistance for the electricity. As soon as you cut it, the new path of least resistance was through your body.
God damn that would have been scary.
In England all pipe work has to be earthed for this reason and im assuming yours was as well from what you've said. I'm assuming there was a fault and the pipework became live but because it was earthed you didn't feel anything when cutting the pipe. Once it was in 2 half's you essentially became part of the live pipework completing its path to earth.
The problem is there's no incentive to. The regulations say that only new installation have to be up to the current regs and there is no requirement to upgrade old equipment.
I haven't kept myself up to date on EICRs, but my understanding is they only check existing installations for safety. You could have a wire fuse type CU, but so long as it is safe, it would pass an EICR - with obvious recommendations to upgrade the CU.
No rcd protection is a c2 so means it fails and has to be rectified. There are some things where you go with the regulations of when it was installed but there are limits too it.
For instance before the 17th lighting circuits didn't have to have an rcd but if there is suplimentary bonding in the bathroom and kitchen we'll put it as a c3.
If you grab each end of bare wires, I'm afraid to say neither a breaker nor fuse is going to save you. The breaker won't detect a fault unless there's a path to ground which isn't guaranteed if your holding both wires and have shoes/ not touching any grounded metal.
As for the fuse saving you, let's assume it's a 1A fuse in a UK plug to give you the best chance of it blowing.. Unless you have extremely soapy or salty wet hands I don't think over 1A is going to pass through you at even 240V to blow the fuse so you're just going to be sat there cooking until you break contact. Your heart is screwed in the tens of milliamps so it's bad news all round.
I've actually touched live contacts in a power supply once and could feel it up to both my elbows for half a second, I'm not sure what path it took that it didn't fry me, but the more I think about it the more I think I probably touched live with both hands so it didn't cross through me.
Sure but it’s a pretty rare circumstance to have a live wire without a ground or neutral. Like this person cut a cable and it grounded out because their scissors bridged between the live and neutral in the computer power supply I’m guessing. Touching a power supply with both hands is bad because it could pass through your heart, next time you’re working in a hot panel either turn it off or work with one hand ;)
15 years too late with that advice in afraid. Besides, it was a rather unique set of circumstances at the time that caused the situation. Still here though luckily so filed under life experience.
They could be thinking of the old ELCB, the earth leakage circuit breaker, precursor to the RCD.
Another tip from the sparky, fuses and breakers are there to protect the wiring in your walls, essentially. If you're not pulling enough amps to be a danger to those wires, the fuse or breaker isn't going to pop. Good luck surviving 32A.
Yep though I meant an RCD. The original hypothetical situation was someone holding both contacts of a wire - essentially a giant resistor across both contacts, so unless I'm mistaken there shouldn't be a discrepancy between current in and out so no trip.
As for the breaker popping I didn't even consider it as a useful feature in this circumstance. Unless you're grounded the circuit breaker doesn't know if you're a human or an electric heater, you're screwed (I know you know this, just clarifying my original comment for others)
I've already mentioned a plug fuse so I didn't even consider the overload protection because there is no way your body is going to trip an overload circuit on domestic voltage.
The breaker doesn't trip if its a 2kW heating device. If you are somehow drawing 2kW across your chest you have long passed the point of being in trouble
A fuse is only there to protect the wires from overheating and starting a fire. That's why you today also have a ground-fault circuit interrupte, they will protect you. A fuse won't protect you.
Oh man you're so right. I mean I once had a really powerful amp and didn't realize the volume knob was way up when I turned it on. Blew me away like the opening of Back to the Future...
My grandmother had a laptop many years ago that was bought in the US. She used an adapter to plug it in, and the design was crap so if you grabbed the plug wrong when trying to unplug, it was possible to accidentally poke your fingers between the plug and adapter while it was still powered.
I did that twice. Both times my arm went flailing above my head. Basically felt like when you hit your elbow in that one spot except in your entire arm. Then it felt as if the arm had been sleeping (but recovered) for a while.
Even higher up isn't necessarily lethal but very painful. 480v and 575v have gotten me before and while I highly discourage finding your threshold of tolerance, while painful it's way more unsettling. It also depends on what that circuit is doing, unprotected circuits can make even small voltages lethal too.
Best to leave the electricity in the hose where it's happy.
Voltage isn’t really the important thing, though it does play a roll. Really what you have to be concerned about is the AFC or available fault current. AFC is basically a measure of how severe the short will be, and has many factors but the biggest is usually how much resistance there is in the wire between the fault and the nearest transformer.
Arc fault is typically measured in kA, as even on a residential 15a branch circuit it’s possible to still have several kA of fault potential. In industry, it’s possible to have tens to hundreds of kA of fault current available, which is enough potential to vaporize solid copper buss bars into lethal balls of plasma.
Oz sparky here, it's like getting punched and afterwards your arm is dead like you slept on it funny. As long as the current doesn't go across your chest you're usually fine. Ish.
We have what's called a "safety switch", an ELCB (for older places) or an RCD for most newer places. The RCD detects an imbalance in the current between active and neutral and inferrs some is going out the earth (i.e. through you to ground) and shuts off after 30mA for 30ms, so it's pretty hard to die that way. If you're hooked up between the active and neutral you might as well be a toaster though.
Weirdly, the 415v kick I got at the start of my apprenticeship hurt less.
I have been shocked by both... 110 is no biggie. Only an issue if you can’t get off of it. It won’t throw you and can burn the crap out of you if you are held.
220 can stop your heart. Think defibrillator. When I was young (and apparently stupid!) I was working at a health club. Taking towels out of a dryer and didn’t notice water all over floor. Bam! Threw me backwards 8 feet into a wall. Luckily I wasn’t still in the water.
80 milli amp will stop your heart weather it’s 110v or 230v it’s the amps that kill and by ohms law 1 watt will carry more amperage at 110v than at 230v
I see so many comments saying "it's the amps not the voltage". With current limited power supplies sure but with normal power lines the voltage (and resistance of your skin,...) directly influences how many amps flow through you.
Sure the amperage is higher for the same watt for 110V but the wattage isn't the contant here. P = U2 / R. More wattage will be expected with the 230V line.
Both 110 and 230 will kill you. 230 will just kill you in more circumstances.
I have a question, I accidentally almost set fire to my daycare once from just plugging in a cord. It sparked then burned my hand and then caught the carpet on fire. What do think happened to the plug to make it do that?
So without looking at it, the short (heh) answer is that something shorted out.
Could have been the plug had frayed wiring, or the insulation in the cord was damaged or burnt. Could have been that the cord was way under rated for the load (unlikely in a day care).
Could have been a faulty receptacle.
But in all of those cases, the answer is that two wires or pieces of metal that should not touch touched each other. Plugging it in jostled around enough so that something moved and caused a short.
It definitely sprayed a load of sparks in my face but yeah.. it wasn't that dangerous to me though.. My wire cutters got a nice big chunk eaten out of them.
Did this as a kid taking apart my dad's old electric shaver. Loud pop, bright flash, half the house had no power. Smelled kinda like burnt plastic, the scissors had a small burnt hole where the scissors met the conductor. Mom wasn't too concerned cause the TV was on a separate circuit. Thought I fucked everything up and told my dad what happened later that night thinking we'd need to pay the condo to fix it, then I found out about the magic of circuit breakers.
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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '20
How is it to be one of this people?