[Amps] 220V wiring: Was Question about safety ground connection

[Peter Chadwick]

Rich said:
>As I understand it, Ian, an arc-fault circuit breaker has a RF detector 
operating a disconnect device.<
Unless it operates at a reasonably high field strength (at least 10v/m), not only radio amateurs but people living relatively close to an amateur or mobile radio base station, maybe even a cellular base station, or a broadcast station could have trouble. Especially the latter. I remember staying at a hotel somewhere in the US where the local TV station tower was in the hotel grounds - and, judging by the base insulator and the the two other towers carefully spaced from it, was a BC band radiator too. That would sort out such a device!
Regrettably, it appears to me that my professional brethren, both in the power side of the industry and those in the IT side, have so little understanding of  radio and the effects that it can have on badly designed equipment, as well as vice versa,  that their naivety is actually dangerous. Nearly as bad as the so called 'safety' experts, who are often even more dangerous -  a bit like 'security experts'. Certainly in the UK and EU in general, the tendency is not so much as to promote safe habits of work as to modify work such that safe habits aren't needed. Which is all very well until something goes wrong......

73

Peter SM/G3RZP (for a few more hours - fortunately, because it's cold here!)