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EMF 'dirty electricity' experience?

James Rayner
Evening folks. A little bit of a strange scenario I have come across that I haven't had a great deal of previous experience with other than the odd googling and conspiracy theories, here goes.

I was contacted by a customer to investigate 'dirty electricity' at a property they intend to move into, the property is a late 60's bungalow which has been rewired sometime in the late 90's. Empty with any white goods unplugged even the door bell has been isolated. His wife suffers from EMF hypersensitivity ( I had to Google it too), he has showed me a little handheld meter he has that from chest height upwards towards the ceiling throughout the house reads at its maximum range EMF of 200v/m. The uT (micro Tesla) doesn't register either at all or on the lowest indicator. 0.2uT.

I have had a look in the loft and all the wiring is sat under insulation touching the ceiling and drops to switches and sockets, my understanding is that all electrical transmission cables emit a magnetic field. And the v/m shouldn't cause an issue unless your reading over 9kv/m. If the uT was high it would indicate a possible breakdown of the insulation or a bad appliance causing harmonics.

When you isolate the supply the reading as expected drops to 0v/m.

My theory is his EMF meter is purely detecting a live cable (almost like a cable finder) his wife says she gets a head ache when she spends any amount of time in the property. Now I'm not sure if the readout on her meter showing red is making her think she has a head ache or not.

Any of you guru's ever had a similar situation and where the hell do I go next.

Oh I should also add I had my logger installed for a week and nothing untoward shows up. I ran a IEEE 519 report with the data which is harmonics in electric power systems and it passed all the requirements.

Apologies for the long post on a Friday night and thank you if you're still reading.

Im still learning more and more in this vast industry and would appreciate any experiences you can share.

James
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  • 0
    Did it make much difference if you walked the meter around the bungalow?


    Also, after you isolated the supply and the meter reading dropped to 0v/m did you try bringing on the various circuits one by one to see if the cause is from one circuit, or distributed across all circuits?


    I am thinking along the lines that a T&E cable under power would have both an energised Live plus Neutral (and Earth) and thus not radiate, but if for some reason there is, in a worse case scenario, a singe core cable connected as Live, then this may be the cause? 

    (A couple of years ago was working on a house that we were planning to rent out and found a coil of about 10 meter of 2.5 T&E under the floorboards at the top of the stairs. The cores had been individually taped over.  Looking in the consumer unit, there was the other end of the cable, again with the cores neatly taped. Something had obviously been planned in the past, but what? The house had been rewired about 20 years previously.)

    Clive
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  • 0
    Did it make much difference if you walked the meter around the bungalow?


    Also, after you isolated the supply and the meter reading dropped to 0v/m did you try bringing on the various circuits one by one to see if the cause is from one circuit, or distributed across all circuits?


    I am thinking along the lines that a T&E cable under power would have both an energised Live plus Neutral (and Earth) and thus not radiate, but if for some reason there is, in a worse case scenario, a singe core cable connected as Live, then this may be the cause? 

    (A couple of years ago was working on a house that we were planning to rent out and found a coil of about 10 meter of 2.5 T&E under the floorboards at the top of the stairs. The cores had been individually taped over.  Looking in the consumer unit, there was the other end of the cable, again with the cores neatly taped. Something had obviously been planned in the past, but what? The house had been rewired about 20 years previously.)

    Clive
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