Melted pliers!

Dear Mike. Please don't do that any more.

Yes.

This was bad. Do not attempt this again.

Many amperes

There are bad hair days and then there are no-hair days. Get the picture?

Why in the world would you not have guaranteed the power was shut off before you approached this?

You were very lucky you had the good fortune to be using insulated pliers at the time.

Imagine what your body would look like had it been in contact with the metal and not protected by the rubber grips.

Exactly. To answer your question, what was the size of the circuit breaker? Current takes the path of least resistance. In this case the pliers, instead of you. Don't work on live wires.

I doubt you woulda been dead, but you would have gotten quite a bite. You say you were knocked unconcious.

Very unusual for the 220 that was probably feeding into the jacuzzi!

Under any circumstances...this falls under the category of "life lessons.

Like everyone has said: Don't do it again!

Wrong, wrong, wrong! He could have been killed!

However it depends not on the amount of volts but the amount of current (measured in amps). And it depends on the pathway where they go through your body.

Sometimes people get hit by lightning (100 KV or greater), and still survive, presumably because the current passes along the surface of their body, not through the middle of the body.

For example, you only need 50mA across your heart to kill you. Furthermore, 200 ma applied across your internal organs...(right arm/hand to left arm hand) and your toast.

Keep in mind, a taser transmits thousands of volts, but not many amps.

Absolutely.



We used to say "It's volts that jolt but mils that kill"



Yes, with household AC any pathway involving the heart and/or lungs is not good. A sustained AC shock at 120 V, 50/60 Hz is an especially dangerous source of ventricular fibrillation because it usually exceeds the let-go threshold, while not delivering enough initial energy to propel the person away from the source.

I was once working in a TV repair shop when a tool salesman wanted to demonstrated some higher quality side cutters to the boss. "See how clean they cut" he said and picked up a length of plastic covered twin core 5 A cord that was running across a bench. Before anyone could stop him, he'd cut it. I still remember the flash and bang. This was in England where the ordinary supply is 240 V. Afterwards one of the side cutter blades was gone, and the other had been melted along its edge. He had a burned face and needed hospital treatment. This is what I would be thinking of danger wise - arc flash quite near to the face, and vaporized metal flying about. Putting a dead short on the supply is going to limit the length of any shock, which would be reduced or avoided by properly insulated handles.

Calm down, Ragman. I never said he could not be killed. Of course he could have been killed...he could have been killed by 110 if conditions were right.

But my guess is for every accident that involves a 220 bite...there is one death for every 10,000 bites. (I made that up...I do not have stats.)

I've been stung by 220...and I know a half dozen other people who have. None of us were even knocked unconcious. We took a bad bite...and I KNOW I've never gone back for a second bite of 220 and my guess is none of them have either.

Yes...one can get killed.

You might want to check the obits to see if you got killed.....

This is calculatible. Using the weight of the pliers before and after the incident you can do a heat capacity determination (heating pliers to melting point, heat of melting) you got the energy.

Now using an average cross-section of the pliers, the material conductivity, and path length--you determine the path resistance--using the base voltage (220) you now have the current.

Now comes the SWAG--how long did it go go go--resistance and current, voltage also yields that little cookie---

One thing--its a good thing the whole damn thing wasn't wet. Under ideal conditions you can kill a human with 5 watts. You had at least ten thousands time that.

Rap

O my god! That sounds so scary. Thank God you are saved. Take care

I say we do this again and have some guy with a camera and another guy with some MMA gloves to knock him away if it takes another path.

Ill bet the spark was neat

The breaker that tripped or should have will give you the approximate fault current. And yes you could have died