<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 27/04/2010, at 11:05 AM, Paul Mullins wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Connect one end of the hookup wire to your earthing system, "make sure there<br>is NOT MAINS VOLTAGE PRESENT" believe it or not some stobbie poles are alive<br>remember safety first people. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR OF PEOPLE GETTING HURT, I<br>mean this.<br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>Heh, tell me about it! When I was living at my folks place in Dandenong a few years back, I had hell with the RCD on the garage sub-board tripping every time there was a brownout, and the 2x3kva UPS's kicked in.. A bit of testing later, revealed the mains earth in the garage was *normally* sitting at ~3VAC towards active, and peaked at around 20VAC momentarily when the UPS's switched off battery and back to mains.. Not entirely sure why a floaty earth would effect the RCD so, but a nice 6 foot copper rod left in the bush by Actew a few years earlier (well actually there was a WHOLE bunch of them, along with some electricity poles and such.. I think they were getting ready to replace a power run.. but seriously, who leaves earth rods just sitting in the bush??) driven into the ground beside the shed, and attached to the earth coming the 30m up from the house solved the RCD problems :)</div><div><br></div><div>--DG</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Damien Gardner Jnr<br>VK2TDG. Dip EE. GradIEAust<br><a href="mailto:rendrag@rendrag.net">rendrag@rendrag.net</a> - <a href="http://www.rendrag.net/">http://www.rendrag.net/</a><br>--<br>We rode on the winds of the rising storm,<br> We ran to the sounds of thunder.<br>We danced among the lightning bolts,<br> and tore the world asunder</div><div><br></div></div></span></div></body></html>