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Re: D.C. Danger with water gaps



Original poster: "Michael McCarty by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <kb8yhv-at-amsat-dot-org>

> My point was that AC amkes oxygen & hydrogen, just as DC
> does, and that care and thought are well applied.
>  
> > Hi, i think u are mistaken, i used standared AC to
> > produce hydrogen and oxygen before, this way it dosen't
> > eat the electrodes as quick.  The humidifier thing
> > could be 2 heating elements.

Did you use special electrodes to do this?  I've done this with
DC and carbon electrodes.  The cheap humidifiers that were
mentioned just use lamp cord to two steel strips spaced about 
1/4" apart, the resistance of the water does the rest.

I've also seen this on a large scale a few times.  I work as a
power linesman for the Air Force and was called to a facility
one night to turn off the power because of a stream leak.  The
buildings in that area were fed by a centralized boiler and 
when somebody reported steam coming out the basement doors
that was the first thing to come to mind.  I shut off the power
at the transformer across the street and we pumped three feet
of water out of the basement before we found a garden hose that
had been left on near a plugged up floor drain.  The 480 volt 
main breaker and a 50 KVA air cooled lighting transformer
were completely submerged and boiling the water.  The fire chief
demanded to know what was wrong with our electrical equipment
because it didn't trip.  I had to tell him that water isn't as
conductive as he thought it was...

Another time we were called out for "explosions" in an large
hangar.  We tracked it down to what sounded like a rifle shot
every 15 minutes or so in a manhole.  We pulled the cover
and found a lead sheathed 480 volt cable that was missing most
of its sheath where it had faulted.  It had heated several thousand
gallons of water in the manhole to around 180 degs.  The steam
would rise and condense on the ceiling and then drip off onto the
cable until it was saturated enough that it would flash over to the
concrete wall every 15 minutes or so.  This circuit was on a 1200
amp breaker.  If there had been a hydrogen buildup in there we 
probably would have found the manhole cover a few blocks away.

I've also heard of using barrels of water as resistive ballasts for tesla
coils.  This doesn't involve water heater elements.  Using a 55 gallon
poly drum full of water a person would just need to vary the depth
of two steel electrodes in the water to control the current.

-Mac