- Joined
- Aug 3, 2009
- Messages
- 1,771
- Reaction score
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A wee story for you from my sister in laws Birthday drink in her garden last night.
When my wife and I walked round to hers sisters night last I settled down in the garden seat opened my first beer. SIL starting telling me that she got her first electric shock and it was like someone punching her in the arm. I said yip sounds like you got a shock, tell me more.
She was cutting the wettish grass for us coming round and cut through the cable, the cable wrapped round the blade and sliced into the live, the wet grass I presume gave a conductive path from the blade through the plastic body of the lawnmower up the metal handle,up SIL arm and down to earth.
I asked where it was plugged into, and it was one of the RCD incopererated sockets, which was in the tripped position when I then looked at it.
Curosity got the better of me and I walked home which is just round the corner, got my old RCD tester and plugged it in, x1 was 41mS and x5 was 18mS. Told my sister in law that the RCD had done its job and limited the time she got a shock for to fractions of a second, but she got a fright and I bet she will be very careful in the future, once I have replaced cable. Her husband said to me later that there was a lesson for him as sometimes he doesn’t use that socket but he will from now on.
When my wife and I walked round to hers sisters night last I settled down in the garden seat opened my first beer. SIL starting telling me that she got her first electric shock and it was like someone punching her in the arm. I said yip sounds like you got a shock, tell me more.
She was cutting the wettish grass for us coming round and cut through the cable, the cable wrapped round the blade and sliced into the live, the wet grass I presume gave a conductive path from the blade through the plastic body of the lawnmower up the metal handle,up SIL arm and down to earth.
I asked where it was plugged into, and it was one of the RCD incopererated sockets, which was in the tripped position when I then looked at it.
Curosity got the better of me and I walked home which is just round the corner, got my old RCD tester and plugged it in, x1 was 41mS and x5 was 18mS. Told my sister in law that the RCD had done its job and limited the time she got a shock for to fractions of a second, but she got a fright and I bet she will be very careful in the future, once I have replaced cable. Her husband said to me later that there was a lesson for him as sometimes he doesn’t use that socket but he will from now on.
