Re: Preventing a REALLY expensive mistake.

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "John Williams by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <jwilliams-at-edm-dot-net>

Christopher:

	If I were in that situation I would give serious thought to
large industrial scale isolation transformers on the power feeds into
the high voltage lab.
	One of the fellows I know who builds really large coils depends
on the spike dampening tendencies of the several hundred pounds of
iron in his power control systems to keep line variances from the
coils from going back along the system and toasting things in his home
and garage.
	If you are going to be constructing and testing really large coils
it is something to think about.  This guy does the big stuff.  Last contact
I had with him he was working on a system that drew, I think, something
like 90 KW input.  His "little" coils use 5 KW instrumentation transformers.
	It seems worth looking into if you have a "belt and suspenders"
situation and from what you describe that is what you have.
	Concrete, even concrete that has set for many years, has a lot
of moisture in it and a slab tilt up building, which seems to be what you
are describing here, is made of steel reinforced slabs.  When exposed to
the kind of potentials a tesla coil develops the stuff can hardly be thought
of as an insulator.  A friend of mine many years ago built a coil that tossed
of eight to ten foot arcs in his parents garage.  It did stike the floor
several
times.  Where it struck the arc caused the moisture in the concrete slab to
vaporize and blow chips out of the concrete.  But that is all.
	What kind of walls do you have separating the various areas
you will be using? Is this all one open space and if so will you be
constructing
your own wall systems?  If you do have to build your own walls I would
think about turning the computer area into a faraday cage.  All it would
take is a bit of chiken wire and some serious crimping tools during
construction.
	My two cents...

	John