Re: Apartment coilers beware!

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Pyrotrons-at-aol-dot-com 

Hi Rick:

This is a fabulous story.....................very entertaining indeed!!

Yeah, induction can and does occur. Very powerful effect with conventional 
(disruptive) tesla coils, and even more pronounced with vacuum tube coils.

>Well wouldn't you know it, the coil springs in my mattress must have >been 
arcing too, because my bed caught fire--big time.  No direct hits, >it was 
100% induction that started the fire.

Really hilarious! I'd say mattress springs are pretty good inductors. I'm not 
sure of house wiring in the walls, however. Well along these lines:

I had an unconnected 120V circuit in my workshop, and I had left the two 
(hot) romex wires hanging out of the electrical box to be connected later. 
When I ran my 4.5" coil system at about 900VA, I kept noticing a bright, 
ultraviolet spark off to my right every now and then. I thought it was a 
reflection from the spark gap in the window or something - but lo and behold, 
I found that the romex ends were arcing a good 1.5" to each other. Great 
example of induced voltage in 120V wiring. Very real. Be careful.  

Well, you might get some nice lectures on safety from various 
people......which is expected I suppose. I will say, that you're probably 
okay, overlooking the in-wall wiring part of things. You did have a fire 
extinguisher - and it fulfilled it's purpose entirely. Good going there. Do 
get some chicken wire and make a giant cage around your coil. Ground it to 
the RF ground. Theres no telling what heck you're causing your neighbors ; ) 
as far as RFI/TVI goes. The faraday cage will kill all that.

If worse comes to worse, why not run the thing outside? Wind sucks, yeah, but 
oh well. You can find a still night here-and-there. At least you won't need a 
faraday cage...and, think of all the curious people that would wander over, 
wondering what you're doing. "I never saw you out here before....so what 
makes you run it outside now?"

Take care,

Justin Hays
KC5PNP
Email: pyrotrons-at-aol-dot-com
Webpage: www.hvguy-dot-com