"Huge" wrote in message
...
On 2015-09-02, charles wrote:
In article ,
Huge wrote:
On 2015-09-02, Dave Liquorice wrote:

The only glaring error is the use of LV to differentiate 240 from 11
kV. To the DNO's 11 kV is "LV", I think 33 kV might be be lowest "HV"
but it could be 125 kV.

33kV is HV, according to the man from the 'leccy. The farm next door
is being demolished and when the bloke from the 'leccy turned up to
disconnect its electricity (& put in a 240V drop for the builders) he
refused to go anywhere near the 33kV "because it was HV".

Well, I wasn't about to argue with him about it. And there's no way I'm
going anywhere near 33kV no matter what the regs say!

I'd tend to regard "low voltage" as "definitely capable of being felt but
not lethal", and "high voltage" as a voltage that you have some chance of
surviving an electric shock from. 240V mains gives you a very nasty belt (I
still have the scars on the first knuckle of my right index finger from when
I brushed it against the terminals of an on-off switch in a tape recorder in
my teens, after I forgot to unplug it, and I had to surreptitiously clean up
my puddle of wee from the bedroom carpet). And then apply various levels of
"extra high", "super high", "extremely high" adjectives beyond that! 650 V
from a third rail would give you very nasty burns and probably kill you. And
25 kV from overhead line train electrification, or 11, 33, 275 or 400 kV
from pylon wires, would probably set you alight as well.

I lodged with a couple after I started my first job, and Mick worked as an
emergency call-out engineer for one of the electricity companies. I remember
he came back late one night, very shocked (pardon the unintentional pun)
after having to clear up from an incident in which a JCB operator had
plunged his bucket into a 400 kV underground cable. The JCB had melted and
twisted so they had to saw it up to get the body of the guy out - and only
then could they start to repair the cable. I take my hat off to the guys who
work on pylon wires, firstly at great height and secondly while the lines
are still live, in specially insulated cherry-pickers.