Aloha! Ciao.

Languages , and a blip on Faraday stuff

Languages are used to convey meaningful information, and usually as long as it does not undermine your hold on power, which may be very limited in time, space, or domain. This is why physicists cannot talk to chemists, and why each of them cannot talk with botanists, etc. Each has it own languages, no Lingua Franca. But having learned a few languages, and having appreciated the subtle nuances of some of them, I am glad I passed the way I did. I learned a bit of English, a bit of Italian, a bit of Spanish, a bit of Electric, a bit of Electronics, a bit of Atomic / Nuclear, a bit of Mechanics, a bit of Carpentry, etc. Each a language in its own right, although I don’t profess to be Bullwinkle’s Mr. Knowitall. I’ve forgotten more than some of you will ever learn, and I’m sure I’ve met some remarkable people along the way. Problem is, I can’t remember any of them. It’s the memory thing. Chalk it up maybe to the concussions I experienced in early age.

I dislike things flying at high speeds, like bullets. That was why I enlisted in the military. Bad decision. The pay is cheap, and it’s difficult to get out of the lease. But I realized I could learn something there.

I went to electronic school, and having nothing else to do, I learned the material. I learned it so well, having weird and unusual study habits, that the foresaid military granted my subsequent wishes. I asked for a new surface installation, and was sent to a shipyard where the installation was being built. I walked into my department’s office, and found a few techs wondering why what they were seeing on their instrument was not what they wished. Hook up a meter to some AC voltage, and it will show a reasonably accurate average number, like 120V. Hook up the same AC voltage to an oscilloscope (a sort of visual meter) and it will show you the 120V in all its glory, as 340V Peak-to-Peak. They were looking at an oscilloscope and expecting to see 120, not 340. I explained and thus became part of the department’s teaching crew. Along the same lines of thought, I later walked into the same office, and saw a similar group of techs wondering why their voltmeter had a decimal point lit after every digit. I looked at the voltmeter’s schematic, suggested testing a component. They did, found it failed, replaced it, and thus ensured my long-term teaching position. Now these guys were processed through the same training as I, so we were supposed to have the same skill level . . . and they and I were entrusted with controlling a floating nuclear power plant.

BTW the equality between 120VDC and 340VAC (Peak-to-Peak) occurred in the early days of electricity, when the intent was to realize the heat output comparability, through a hight tech clothing iron. A world of additional information can be had about the dynamics of Alternating Voltages with the use of a Spectrum Analyzer, perhaps truly high tech, but which is easy to acquire the useful skills thereof.

For a time, at this same assignment, I was asked to manage a dozen men or so. Some being naturally and ostensibly lazy, forced me to step in to finish their work. This I did on one occasion, and when we arrived in port in the USVI, I left for a three-day outing while those lazies were stuck in position.

I left the cheap labor market and went civilian, to work for the owners of 3-mile Island, after, and because of, their melting it. Bad deal. Remind me of my former employ’s “teammates”. Part of the new work involved regular surveys for airborne radioactive material, with instruments we repaired and calibrated. So our skin was on the line. Well worthwhile to do it right. We did. That is, I and the subsequent hires I trained. So a union shop steward approached me, and asked me to slow down, because I made the union brothers look bad (the unions protect their own). They wanted me to do a single job, and get paid three times as much as previously, to keep the lowest denominator slobs looking good? So much for meritocracy. Then I noticed other techs, entrusted with running the landlubbers’ nuclear plant safely, as being cocky. Not wanting to be part of another 3-mile Island, I migrated to another position and location for my own safety and peace of mind.

Having moved to an area and specialty where everyone had to have an FCC license for the job description, I was reassured the “team” was all equally qualified. I couldn’t have been further from reality. The boys told me outright that “they had the situation well in hand, and wished the company would leave them alone, but keep them on the payroll.” I took too much for granted. In single-phase AC systems, like most residential ones, a breaker or fuse is inserted in the hot leg, the other being the return leg, that is tied to ground. I came to troubleshoot some wiring by others that preceded me, and removed the fuse. I though all was safe, until I got shocked. I wanted to kill. The idiot who did the wiring previously inserted the fuse in the return leg. My own safety was in jeopardy, even away from nuclear plants. And appropriately, the previous tech left no identifying marks. In most of my work I left my business card, so that if there was a question, they knew who to reach.

While most maintenance people do not stand in water when working on electrics, it is common to lean against panels, covers, etc. As long as the break is in the hot leg, everything is safe to work on. If the break is placed in the return leg, then even with that break open most wiring is still energized, with possibly dire consequences.

Wanting to do lofty things, like build a house, I needed money, more than my present salary. So I applied for a position that offered more. There was a problem, however. I had scheduled, and paid for, a vacation during the time the entry exam was offered. I asked if they could postpone it. They said no. On vacation I went. On my return I was approached, and asked to take the entry exam . . . because they did not have enough (any really) bright minds who passed the test. I was upgraded. Within six months the position was “clarified,” and became a management position. I was asked on occasion at two or three in the morning, when things went bang, to acquire a crew of able-bodied talent willing to repair the damage. Because of lack of certain employees’ due diligence, the callout list still had some employees that had recently died. So I’d have to apologize to the wife (at two or three in the morning) for trying to get her (dead) husband to come to work. Some of those that answered wanted to know the details. When I obliged, they wanted to know more. When I asked if they really wanted the extra income, they’d get bent out of shape. Union work was not usually volunteered. Being that this work was shift-work, I gained weight, and began to lose time sync. I’d sometimes walk in for work, when it was not my shift. It was time for a change.

As I changed my day job, I searched high and low looking to extend my talents, and met an electrician at a DOE-sponsored conference. He suggested Building Biology. I checked them out and though them a fly-by-night outfit. I nonetheless enrolled and found in several areas my knowledge exceeded the instructors’. Then I found the board of directors was an old-boys club, using cutthroat techniques to narrowly maintain control among two or three people. That situation persist to this date. That aside, Building Biology is supposed to be a melding, and relevance assessment, of electrical and physical phenomena. In short, electromagnetic fields and air quality. For anyone not versed in both it can be overwhelming. Many of the graduates, having no previous technical background, are as fish out of water. Most of them buy into the taught mantra, part of it being dirty electricity filters, which is still taught there, without factual basis. I survived, thrived, and out of necessity was asked to follow in the footsteps of previous Building Biology consultants to either expound on what they did not, or do damage control and correct the former’s mistakes. In more than a few instances, it was in the trail of credentialed Electrical Engineers. Despite still holding a day job, I made this environmental work my hobby, one of several to keep me busy, if and when I retired.

For those thinking this is poppycock, think again. I recall my father being in the hospital with a previously implanted pacemaker (an electrical device stabilizing heart rate). He’d been equipped with a temporary monitor hanging off his neck and laying on his chest. He began to notice his heart rate racing. He told one nurse, and she disregarded him. Becoming more concerned, he told another nurse, and she too disregarded him. A doctor came by, my father told him of the heart rate anomaly, he checked it and quickly had the monitor removed. His personal safety was jeopardized, where the exact opposite was supposed to happen. Realize that human tissue is electrically conductive, under the skin much more so. So the monitor they’d placed on him should not have impacted his heart rate, or the pacemaker, because they were surrounded by a conductive matrix . . .

Shown is a man wearing an electrically conductive Faraday suit, working on an energized power line, to possibly 500,000V or so. Notice it is a close-fitting suit, covering heat to toe. Anything else would be fatal. Faraday suits being what they are, shield from Electric fields only. As shown above, the line’s Magnetic field will go right through the suit, possibly setting off a 10-alarm biological response. But since the exposure is limited to short periods, the human survives. If you were to construct an Electric shield in a house inside a room that is Not close-fitting to the person, it is a Faraday cage in name only. If all openings are securely shut, there will (should) be no fields entering from outside (although even minor leaks will allow RF to enter), but inevitably the user will introduce some field source inside (a 120V lamp, a computer, etc.), voiding the entire concept. Even worse, if the shield itself has residual voltage on it, being that the user will be closer to one surface than another, a differential voltage will occur across the user, allowing that voltage to be expressed internally, possibly wreaking havoc. That differential may be referred to as BV (body voltage), and is present in every living / working space I can think of. Measurement is inexpensive and straightforward, as long as only one source is energized (all circuits off / open except one). Measurement with all sources energized will display the lowest BV where the differential across the human is greatest.

So all is not as it seems. For every profession, or hobby, there are those who excel, those who are mediocre, and those who outright need to get a different job. Case in point, I relegate most automotive repairs to established mechanics and garages. I needed to replace a radiator, so I had it replaced. Within days the heater for the passenger compartment stopped producing heat, in winter. I was advised their work could not have caused this new problem, that they had flushed the system, and was advised that replacing the heater would cost $1200 due to needing to remove many components for access. Stubborn as I am, and believing the mechanic to be blowing smoke, I located the hoses feeding the heater, disconnected them from the engine, attached two hoses to them, one from the home’s potable water system and the other to drain to a convenient container. I backflushed the heater and all kinds of crud came out. I then reconnected the heater to the engine, and lo and behold, the heater produced heat.

There is a large market for Dirty Electricity, because of skilled marketing, and because of general public ignorance. Non-linear devices that produce dirty electricity (Harmonics) have been around for 100 years or more (fluorescent lighting for factory floors). Capacitors (now marketed as filters, but which in, and of themselves produce harmonics) have been in use for about the same time, to help motors run efficiently. Capacitors as used in utility applications have different qualities that preclude their being producers of Harmonics. So all Capacitors are not the same.

An array of capacitors in an electrical substation, commonly referred to as a Cap Bank.

A few spare capacitors sitting on a wooden pallet above. While it may not be intuitively obvious, the “square” caps above have flat plates interleaved among those of opposite polarity. The “round” cap below, in contrast, has the plates wound around each other, giving it inductive properties the one above does not have. That subtle difference makes the above a “clean” cap, and the one below (as also used in dirty electricity “filters,” and most consumer applications) “dirty,” when exposed to alternating voltages.

A common non-utility service cap.

The same cap in use.

Sometimes, due to a variety of circumstances, there is no easy solution to dirty electricity. Long ago a possible client inquired as to his wife’s increased sensitivity following the proprietor installing an outdoor area light in their trailer park. I suggested two levels of reduction. 1) The first was to turn off all breakers. 2) The second was to fully disconnect from the premises’ metallic connections, including the electrical ground. A few weeks later that man sent me a message indicating that: on opening all breakers his wife had immediate relief, but after adjustment of a few days his wife still noted sensitivity. Upon full disconnection, his wife had complete removal of all symptoms. Stalemate. Vested with a variety of modern appliances, or necessities, how can you function without power? The outdoor area light was a non-linear (“dirty”) electrical load. It compromised the 120V it was connected to with Harmonics. Since a utility transformer can feed as many as a dozen users in common, one source can compromise the lot. But more fundamentally, the moment one uses current, the electrical system ground is no longer at zero volts. Although it’s connected to the soil / earth, it acquires a voltage signature representative of the consumption type on the 120V. That was just a few minutes’ steering I provided, which I’ve offered to anyone. However, I do not perform miracles, so the solution may not be what is being marketed to you by others. All of these cures, for application to outlets or to a whole electric panel are in parallel to your use of power. That is, your electric use if dirty will still be dirty. Their claims complement the statement that “if you paint your thumbnails green all will be well.” To say nothing of the magnetized things you stick somewhere for healing claims. And the price . . . $700 for a “Harmonizer?” General ignorance invites vultures, and perhaps a bumbling idiot or two.

So is that really chicken, or something whipped up in a lab with bugs to taste like chicken?

Occasionally a few “highly educated” individuals become aware of my material. There’s been at least one guy, who claimed he was an engineer, blow off one of my blogs. Others may have simply gone away. I’ve had a previous PHD complain that an advert I’d placed in a local rag was fear-mongering, and asked for the source of my data. I advised it was the same gov’t that provided his research grants. He went quiet. They are all entitled to their opinion, however wrong they may be.

The material I present here and on my website may not seem relevant to a healthy individual. Bring on illness and everything changes color. Bring on sensitivity and the world turns upside down. Many in the sensitive community become shunned by their acquaintances and family, when they need them the most. Life is cruel, and so are those of a closed mind.

Anyone with any awareness of current events may feel we are technically going the way of the Dodo. Perhaps, but maybe, just maybe, there’s enough of those brilliant folks (of which I do not claim to be part of) who will prevent it from happening, or at least slow it down enough so I can die of old age. Or read Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED to visualize the alternative.

This site uses no adverts, nor blipverts (although I have considered them), and offers a broad and sound platform to purse specifics in more detail elsewhere. Your cost? Your time. What’s to lose? Have questions? Fire away. Here.

Be cautious, Live, and Enjoy.

© Sal la Duca

www.emfrelief.com