Powering a Light With a Fence Post & Scrap Wire - SWER (Single Wire Earth Return) Demonstration
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In this video we connect a light by using a single wire to send power to a light bulb and use a fence post for return current back to the source.
0:00 - Single Wire Earth Return Intro
0:33 - Setting Up The Experiment
1:25 - SWER Explanation-How It Works
2:21 - Breaker We Need To Use
3:38 - Connections To The Post
5:24 - Diagram With Explanation
7:30 - Ready To Test
8:12 - No Hidden Wires Or Strings
9:09 - We Have Light!
9:47 - Let's Measure The Voltage
12:00 - Voltage Gradient
14:30 - 15,000 Lumen Bulb On SWER Test
15:18 - Voltage & Power Draw
16:23 - What If We Wanted More Power?
18:00 - Sorry NEC
19:50 - SUBSCRIBE!!!
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Blessings,
Ben
When I was 14 we built a cabin about a mile and a half into the woods behind my parents house. After lots of Google searches we ended up grabbing two microwaves and used one transformer to boost the voltage and one to step it back down. We kept the transformers in 5 gallon buckets of mineral oil to keep them cool. With a quite a bit of patched together Romex in the trees on electric fence insulators we ran the hot through the trees and took care of the neutral with ground path return. It worked well but it terrifies me to think about now 😂
No more terrifying than when I was a Cub Scout in '63 and we built hot dog cookers with nails and wires. Stick a dog on 2 nails with a conductor connected to each and plug it in. Could have cooked a Cub or two accidentally. 😱
@@donaldshimkus539 you do know a microwave transformer produces 2 kilovolts right? Presto used to make exactly what you're describing any how, look up the "presto hot dogger"
@@alec4672 I'm sorry, we didn't use the microwave transformers. Just a lamp cord stripped at the end and plugged into a receptacle. Oh, and I might have one of those "Hot Doggers" in my collection of junque, lol.
@@alec4672 I have also jump started vehicles with just one wire from positive to positive and the bumpers touching. That was back when they made real bumpers out of real metal.
That is why I stand on one foot when messing with high voltage!!! Also watch that you are not touching anything with your other hand.
Fun Fact. Back in the early days in San Francisco electric trolleys were powered this way. After a few years water line started to leak all over the place. Turns out the electric return was eating the water pipes. They got thinner and thinner until they could no longer handle the water pressure.
@Andy Smythe I do not know. I do not remember if anything I read on them stated voltage or AC/DC
@Andy Smythe I would assume DC... 600vDC is a common transportation voltage.
Streetcars likely used DC. Using swer on dc systems can be problematic due to the unidirectional nature of dc current. This is why many high voltage dc systems, while they have +v and -v comductors, will use a third, metallic conductor near (but not necessarily at ) earth potential.
And nobody had iron deficiency who drank that water!
I would say it was dc voltage for the pipes to have a galvanic reaction from the electrolysis seeing as the dumbasses made the pipes the sacrificial anode by somehow applying a positive differential to them.. dc voltage speeds up galvanic corrosion alsi even without any electrolysis going on, but thinking about it, if they did somehow do that, the electrolysis would create hydrogen gas and chlorine gas so they would have found out a different way than rusty pipes that they fucked up on the design,, lol
My own experience with SWER is as a telephone technician. The farmer's daughter had moved home to live with her elderly parents, her father was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. She called in to complain about frequent noise on the telephone line. Her mother told her it was okay, all she needed to do was turn the barn lights off. When a tech went out there to check it, he tested the line and everything looked ok except for an imbalance in the capacitance of the line. As he started to trouble shoot the system he received what could have been a life threatening shock.
At some time in the past, the someone (the father?) had decided to control the lights in the barn using one side of a telephone drop wire and SWER, to trigger a relay in the barn to turn the lights on. The way it had been set up, the wire to the relay, which was also the drop wire to the extension bell in the barn, stayed energized but open without the relay contactor energized, putting 120V potential resting on the drop. Because of the locking style of relay, when the lights were on some of the energy was tapped to hold the relay closed, which also put voltage on the return path for the bell and noised up the associated phone line.
My own involvement was as a technical support engineer, called in because of a dispute with the customer. It seems that after the telephone was repaired, they no longer could turn the barn lights on and off from the button in the kitchen.
Wow that's an interesting one. Phone repair techs always have interesting stories like that. I'm not a phone tech myself but work in telecom. Heard a story where a customer said every time they got a phone call the furnace would start. They thought the person was crazy so they send a tech anyway and tech found that someone somehow tapped the thermostat wiring into the phone line. The ring voltage was tripping the furnace relay. Surprised it did not blow it actually.
@@redsquirrelftw We had a customer whose dog would go nuts when their phone rang, and the dog was outside. They were on a party line, and party lines ring with ground return. They had the dog tethered on a chain attached to a 'T' stake outside the back door of the house. The T stake had been driven right through the ground wire attached to the ground rod which provided the path for the ground return and when the ground was damp, the dog got some of the 96V 20Hz ring voltage.
They had complained about a "weak" ring a couple of times, and the first tech had just gone out there and loosened the bias spring on the ringer, the second tech installed one of our new "ringer isolator" gizmos which didn't help either. I was a tech support engineer and I got sent out because not only were they still complaining about the weak ring, they had noticed that the dog yelped and ran around when the phone rang.
It took me about 5 minutes to spot that their ground wasn't right, and the tech they sent out to help me was the first one that had just adjusted the bias spring, and I had him dig out the top of their ground rod and follow the wire, and not only had they cut through the ground wire, but they had cut through the power ground as well, so their entire protective ground and return were depending on the "casual" contact between the cut ends of the grounds and the T stake. Even their well pump was no longer grounded properly.
Jim, I thought sure that was going to be a farmers daughter joke!
@@mavamQ Well, it doesn't apply to this, but the farmer's daughter inherited the farm and proceeded to turn it into a hippie commune. She called for telephone service and I went out and installed the basic black phone that she ordered. She asked me if I couldn't give her "colors" and I told her there was a $5.00 upcharge, which she agreed to, but then when I asked her what color, she told me that she wanted a green phone with a red dial and a blue handle . . . I explained that I could not do that and that was that until I had to go back a couple of weeks later to replace the phone because she had painted it and whatever paint she used, and she had to try several before she found one that would stick, had attacked the plastic of the phone and melted it. She finally had a psychedelic phone, it just didn't work.
@@jimlongley9531 LOL. No doubt the dog really hated tele-marketers.
Several years ago I was asked by my brother in law to help diagnose a leak problem. His waterline to the dishwasher leaked water onto kitchen floor. I was testing in basement and was getting electrical readings on the incoming waterline from the well. Long story short was the sheep barn by the well had a bad connection on the overhead neutral line. When he ran an electrical heater in the sheep barn, the current was following the water line back to the house and through the stainless braided water line to the dishwasher, which was grounded. It created an arcing that melted the line. I recalled that I was getting 86 volts coming in on the water pipes. Weirdest thing I have ever encountered.
We used to use this principle to collect earthworms for fishing. Basically a ground rod (usually scrap steel) connected to hot, with an insulated handle. Stick it in the ground and any worms in within a few feet of the rod would be driven to the surface. If you were on your hands and knees to pick up the worms you’d feel the tingle, especially if the grass was wet.
I was wondering how many worms he found, see that he got the dogs out of the area
@@fordx4n That'd be funny if they had chickens that got loud everytime the phone rang... and then got all happy from the worms coming to the surface, LOL.
That's the first thing I thought of. Lol
Try soaking walnuts in water for an hour or so, dump it on the ground. You will get a lot of worms and you will not die.
@Mark Denovich
When I was a kid, a neighbor of ours was an avid fisherman. He used the same homemade device you described to gather nightcrawlers for fishing. He made one for us, we called it the "worm stick." Us kids had all the bait we needed after that.
I had it plugged in one time and the stick was just lying on top of the ground. My little brother picked it up by the steel rod and got jolted real good, he couldn't let go, I ran to the wall and unplugged it. As I remember it kinda disappeared after that incident, mom must've got wind of what happened. Brings back alot of memories. Always wanted to build another one, but never did. Still love to fish.
This is essentially the way the first telegraphs worked. Single wire, earth return. They discovered that with two low-resistance wires, they could transmit using a lower voltage, original required a couple hundred volts from the batteries of the time, and further before needing a relay to boost the voltage.
You might also look at testing the gradient beneath the path of the hot wire. The return current tends to follow the path of the hot even in a conductive plane.
Understand the Germans during WW1 were able to intercept allies telegraph communication by intercepting the ground current.
And they discovered that adding too much voltage to gain longer distances had a tendency to melt things and turn things into welders, necessitating the development of repeaters to regenerate low signals and forward them on up the line.
Depending on your orientation when near a swer system, if your legs feel heavy, your legs are conducting electricity up one leg and down the other.But you don't feel like your getting a electric shock. Lifting one leg breaks that circuit, then hop away from the metal rod. There is a meter to scan the ground, ( like a metal detector ) . So if you see dead cows/sheep around a swer system, they might have been electrocuted, do not approach the area.That swer system is still in use here in Victoria Australia for farm houses.
That's liberty! Survival of the fittest! Ignorance gets electrocuted! This video is an eye-opener. Thank you for explaining that such swgr is in use in Australia? Fascinating. The farmer who hates his own family! Or just a special kind of behavior based on dirt poor desperation, safety be damned?
Cows cant read or know electricity, most humans are stupid just devolution when idiots gets fried
Yeah m8, I noticed it being used in a farm near Strathbogie Victoria. 🙂
Quarapeds are very susceptible to electrocution as there is sufficient
potential difference between the forelegs and the hind legs -
enough to cause cardiac disrytmia - particularly where the ground is
uneven the potential difference is higher and thus more dangerous.
@David - wow. I have never heard that about "heavy legs".
That's how my electric fence works, I use a bucket of salt water poured at my ground post!
My grandfather had a similar setup to power the electric fence wire around his pig pen. He took a single wire from his shed to a light bulb then ran a bare wire from there around the pig pen on fence insulators so there was no path to ground, but when a pig would try to get out, it would touch the wire while standing on the ground and that would complete the circuit. Pig got shocked, squealed, stayed in the pen. The purpose of the light bulb was so that if some grass grew up and leaned on the fence or something else was on the wire, the light bulb would be lit and he would know the fence needed attention. A side benefit was that the electric fence used no power whatsoever unless it was shocking something or needed attention.
Your comment was worth watching this video now I see a useful application. Probably too great of a shock for chickens but it good way to keep larger livestock in a small area.
@@brotherskeeper2598 Just don't go shocking yourself 👍
@@brotherskeeper2598 Umm ; chickens fly! And if they don't fly, they don;t climb fences. What Up Dude?
@@haroldwestrich3312
Chickens fly?
@@haroldwestrich3312
I know they can kinda fly, and if they fly up enough to sit on the wire, they would not get shocked anyway because there not grounded.
My father-in-law owned a cattle farm, his "hot fence" consisted of a bare wire insulated on fence posts, and plugged into the "hot" side of the outlet. The cattle would complete the circuit when they tried to get through the fence. It worked for 70+ years.
Awesome video, thanks! You're the second person that I've seen doing this. Couple years ago I had an electrician over to connect my newly built garage to it's own 200 amp service. The electrician knew that I had grounding issues with the house since we are in sand, therefore he tested my drilled well casing for ground and he did it pretty much the same way you just did it. At first when he told me to go plug the extension cord in, I plugged it in a GFCI receptacle outside and it would trip as soon as he turned the switch on so I plugged it in the house in a regular receptacle and wouldn't you know it, it worked. He did some more testing I believe and he told me that my well casing was a very good ground. Now my garage and my house are grounded at the well. He ran a #6 bare to the grounding rods at the house and crimped it to the wire there. Can't wait to see when you do this video again but with GFCI receptacle to see if it works for you. Personally I don't think it will work.
Cheers from Kazabazua, Quebec, Canada.
It wouldn't. He explained why a GFCI breaker wouldnt work. Same with an outlet. This system is a ground fault. So a receptacle or breaker designed to trip upon recognition of a ground fault would trip. Kind of like saying i bet if you plug in a DC device into an AC power source I bet it wouldn't work. Well Of course not it's not design to.
About 55 years I went with my brother in-law to look at an old generator in an old service station garage it was massive it supplied the whole town and farm out ten miles away running power out by the old barbwire fencing the old gentle man who showed us this massive single piston motor told how the owner of the plant would leave work at the service station at 900 leaving the generator running unattended overnight if the generator was overloaded it would power out and die and the owner didn't get out of bed to restart it so no power until he got to work at eight in the morning since you could hear it from every where it serviced if they heard it laboring every body rushed to shut down all power they could otherwise no power till morning so pumps and anything else would be turned off until the generator was running properly again that's something people wouldn't put up with and safety regulations wouldn't allow now can you imagine the noise and the danger of those barbwire fencing power run through them back then people were grateful just to have the convenience of having power you could have hot and cold running water a toilet tub and sink a coal Stoker for the furnace get up to a nice warm house convenience those in big cities took for granted
Douglas Windsor, Thank you for this excellent piece of history. But seriously, did i understand they used barbed wire for transmission lines?
@@What2B yes back then they did a lot of stuff we would never even think of today having power gave you the ability to have modern conveniences like heat water and lights on command just think of the convenience didn't have to get up during the night to add coal to the furnace didn't have to pump the water you didn't even have to watch your battery level and when they got too low start the generator to top them up everything was much easier so you put up with a little more dangerous situations thankfully the government brought in electrification and we saw that every small town and almost every farm could have have power interesting that it took until the mid seventys before they brought in gasification my brother in-law and his dad hooked up to gas in 1975 no more need to check the level of fuel his dad's wasn't as critical as long as the diesel tank for the farm had fuel he could always get a couple of jug and add it to the heating oil tank but my brother in-law was on propane and when it run out there was no heat until the dealer got there but it was more convenient with a a thousand gallon tank you had more than enough to last the winter but since gas isn't as profitable when utilities were deregulated the gas co-op got a monopoly where we are at we are only able to become a member of the natural gas co-op and Buy from them
@@douglaswindsor120 Thank you, great share 👍🏾
Back in the sixties I had a service call in a older house that had gas lights at one time. When they converted to electric, they only ran one wire to each fixture and used the old gas pipes all through the house as a neutral. one wire from each fixture was connected to the old pipe with a hose clamp. The old gas line was connected in the basement to the meter. All was well until the plumber decided to clean up that mess when he installed a new water heater that morning.
For a remote ranch in Cochise County Arizona, Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative ran a SWER line for many miles to provide service, the ranch previously only had generators. I do not recall the grounding methods at each end but I believe the primary and secondary at the customer’s supply transformer were grounded separately. The fact that the single wire was probably in excess of 10 KV would put the earth current quite low especially for loads of around 3 - 5 KW.
The fun part was the AZ Corporate Commission would not allow Sulphur Springs to run power lines through APS designated territory even though APS would not provide a line to the ranch. So the SWER ran along rural roads in a long rectangular path going east then south making the line many miles longer than it needed to be had it run diagonally!
That's interesting. I've tried it at both my Arizona desert ranches. One north of Tucson about 30 miles, somewhat rocky terrain, and the other in the Harquahala Valley west of Phoenix, more of a dirt/sand terrain. It doesn't even work in a few feet in our dry desert ground.
The power companies only need a ground when they set the power pole at the home, barn, ect.
They run it down and curl it on the bottom of the pole. It's there to tap, or ground the208v , 240v transformer.
Also your main disconnect is the last place the neutral and ground are tied together.
This one works too. Insulate an 85 ft. bare copper wire a foot off the ground on both ends. Tap a third of the way down with a coaxial cable, attach the coax to one side of the bulb and the other side to a ground wire. Gets you 15 watts by day and 8 watts by night. It works off of solar radiation. Try it.👍
Seriously? That's awesome.
I love to see that demonstrated. I don’t have the space to try it.
Any interest in doing a video on this? Does the wire have to be straight for the 85ft, or can it loop, etc?
Am I the only one confused? A bare copper wire but insulated? Tap a third of the way with a hammer? The coax cable inner or outer wires?
@@Laurel-Crowned you want to use the center lead of the coax, best if soldered. I learned this theory watching a video two years ago from a solar research company in Sweden. You don't need to hook it up to your power panel. I get 15 watts DC during the day, and drops to 8 watts after dark. I have a Westinghouse solar power station for my tiny house, but use this to charge all my devices. You just have to have the long wire fenced or protected where deer won't trip over it and break it loose. It will easily power a led bulb, but you're not going to get 115 volts AC out of it.
Benjamin, you've touched on something that can be very useful for outdoor lighting that's 100% safe and legal SWER. You can easily install LED lighting at your mailbox if you make your own led lamp(s) with a few LED's wired in series and/or parallel.
One important thing to know is that the National Electrical Code is in force only when you use more than 50 Volts to power a circuit. Since resistance of damp earth is only around 3 to 5 Ohms per foot, give or take, the point is you can easily implement a low voltage (much lower than 50 Volts) LED lamp installation using, say, 12 Volts or so. You can also use very small and cheap insulated wire with mA levels of current. 20-gauge solid copper wire is only 1-Ohm per 100 ft. and it can easily carry a couple of Amps, more if it's buried in the ground. You'll want to drive a copper clad ground rod into the ground next to your mailbox so as to get down into permanently damp earth for the return line.
A common 3mm white LED will light to full brilliance at a max of 3 Volts DC with a max current of 20 mA. Use Ohm's law to work out a lamp with several LEDs inside a Mason jar. You just have to work out what total voltage is required to light up the LEDs in series, and how much current to supply with a maximum of 20 mA of current for each series string of LED's. For example, 3 white LEDs in series needs 9VDC and a string of 3 white LEDs uses a max of 20 mA of current for full brilliance. Less current = less brightness. If you make a lamp with 5 strings of 3 LED's, you'll need 9V at 100 mA. You can use a common wall wart 12VDC power supply with a minimum current rating of 150 mA or so (never run a power supply at more than 80% of its capacity). Measure the DC voltage at the end of the wires at your mailbox and it should be more than 9 VDC. Thus, the last thing to do is use Ohm's law and work out the extra resistance required for each string to limit current to 20 mA or less. For example, if you have 10.5 VDC at the lamp post, you need to insert a resistor in series with each string to reduce the voltage a minimum of 1.5 VDC per string to get 9VDC. Using Ohms law (Voltage = Amps times Resistance), the extra resistance is found by dividing Voltage by Amps = 1.5V/0.020A = 75 Ohms. The closest standard resistance value is 82 Ohms, so the LED's will be just a little less bright than maximum. If you have less than 9VDC, you can make series LED strings of 2 LEDs, thus needing onl 6 VDC per string. Or, change out the wall wart to, say, 15 VDC. Play with it on a breadboard and decide how much light you want from those LEDs, but never go above 3V and 20 mA per LED cuz they will soon burn out if you do.
Enjoy!
Yes, it works. Heavily frowned upon by inspectors and power companies.
They don't want competition or to give you free energy.
It's not code. All outdoor lighting MUST have a Ground fault breaker or outlet. You can use ground fault outlets to run outdoor lighting.
Hope this guy has sufficient insurance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@wolterbijleveld205 Dont be a Dumbass.. Its completely UNSAFE, thats why.
As a teen, I baled hay on a farm where the farmer used this for his electric cattle fence. The single wire was the top run of barbed wire. He said they would only touch it once. At the gates he had a hollow piece of wood slid over the wire for a handle and a hook bent on the end that you hooked into a loop of wire bent on the other side of the gate. You hanled it very carefully.
wouldn't wanna touch that wood when wet say a rainy day?
The house I grew up in was from 1910 and it had electricity installed by TECO in 1930, probably part of the FDR initiatives during Depression years. It had a single wire earth return, and once I touched it, and got drilled a bit by it, thankfully it was on the "ground" side of the house system. We had to replace the iron rod eventually because the indoor electric started flickering and washing machine motor wasn't working correctly. In the 1990's early, the electric company removed the older meter, put in a new one with an incoming ground, and that caused the monthly bill to go up, claiming we were using more electric than before, which we weren't. We sold the place after 2000 and due to it being prime waterfront property, the old place was demolished by buyers and a new building placed there.
The Pacific Intertie is a 1 million volt (line-to-line) 3000 Megawatt DC transmission line that runs from The Dalles, in Oregon down to Sylmar in Southern California. They have a linkage to ground in fields in Oregon and one in Santa Monica Bay in Southern California. If one of the transmission wires breaks they can still transmit 1500 MW of power using a ground return but only for a limited time as that amount of current would damage underground infrastructure.
You have the added benefit of walking the path and picking up tons of night crawlers while the circuit is on.
The Telegraph used to operate their wires using a Earth Battery... At each pole they would alternately drive a Galvanized rod and then a Copper rod... (A Battery is 2 dissimilar metals in a acidic base) Whereby their is sufficient acids in the soil to produce current after connecting the wiring to each metal rod in the ground... Just a neat story from a ole man!!!
cool
A very good example of: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Very interesting experiment! Stuff I've often wondered about and wanted to try but never bothered. You did it for me! Nice plot of land there. Having dogs and cats and kids as background extras in your videos is really a nice style.
The resistance of the soil depends on two main factors, mineral content and moisture - that setup will work better in rainy weather. I've used a ground stake and a long wire to measure soil resistance in conjunction with ham radio antennas, less resistance means better ground plane and more efficient transmission. If the ground was too dry, turn on a lawn sprinkler and dampen the area under the antenna, it helped make more distant contacts.
Won't that create hydrogen gas from electrolysis?
There is a lighthouse on the SE coast of Iceland that was powered by a single conductor but has been replaced by a two conductor buried cable. Probably less shocking to tourists tromping around the grounds.
I wonder how many fell victim to the shocker
TH-cam is the new classroom. Quite interesting.👍
I did this as a kid to bring worms to the surface for fishing, damp soil helps.
Yes I’m lucky to have survived!
Me too. The worms would die more quickly as I recall though.
Did the same back in the day, an old timer showed me this trick
Done this myself, many years back. 😱🙃😕😫
Turn off current before, gathering.
He made a video about this topic: th-cam.com/video/uxEYMFRxLuA/w-d-xo.html
SWER is alive and well in some rural parts of Australia, with a transmission voltage of 19.1kV. The secondary (240V) earth is quite separate from the primary earth. The results of a fault condition with a common earth could be imagined, along with the unavoidable voltage gradient of the primary earth. One disadvantage is that it's only a single phase supply.
This is a cool proof of concept that I hope I never need to use
I hope no one uses it...
Except for power transmission/distribution.
I don't get why anyone disliked this video. It's just information. Thanks ben
I'm not surprised that 15k lumen LED worked that far away on that earth ground system. I just did some 12v landscape lighting where I had exceeded the recommended wire distance from the low volt transformer... probably close to 200 ft for the furthest light. They all worked perfectly fine! LEDs often work with 1/2 it's designed voltage. If I'd had halogens, they'd have been really dimmed or not working at all. The LED's did fine... no dimming, not blinking, totally normal function. Wire lengths are a recommendation but not always a requirement.
and those LEDs will actually last longer because of it...
Ur content is so informational and useful im an electrical apprentice and i have learned so much from you. Thank you sir
Very nice video! I like the zoomed out shots with the sunset in the background. You tell a good story in your videos as you go through the "how to" and are good with the various filming perspectives. Well done man! I haven't been to your channel in a while, looks like you had a few videos that took off as well! Keep 'em coming Ben! 💪💪 God bless you and family, hope you had a wonderful Christmas that will be followed up by an even better New Years! 🎄🎄🎄
Why do folks celebrate Christmas ..? It’s a pagan holiday ..! All it does is cast curses on your family …
When ConEdison in NYC was trying to standardize the electrical system in the city, they found out that a few people had been getting free electricity from ground eddy currents passing through the dirt in their back yards.
All they had to do was drive two metal stakes into the ground and move them back and forth, closer or farther away to "adjust" the voltage to what they wanted.
"Ground-Return" 22V Single Leg is very common in Australia and New Zealand to this day.
I love electrical experiments.
POW's in Colditz Castle (Among other POW Camps) used earth returns to power their clandestine radios giving them information on the war's progress
An old fence post is usually quite rusty under ground. It would see this with a good copper ground rod.
Any system that makes you think "I'd better keep the dogs away from it" isn't something I need in my life. Nice demo! 👍
Hey thanks Bejamer for coming back I’m proud of you 👍
When I first saw the high tension wires in the distance and your insulated scrap wire coming toward a parallel fence, I thought you were going to "tap" the RF energy from the transmission lines. That might be an interesting experiment for a future video.
I agree. With knowledge of electronics and having done a lot of electrical over the years I'm always looking to learn something.
What a fun and interesting test. I have always wondered what would happen in this instance. Thank you for this video, I learned a lot.
It is a circuit grounded by or through a fence post, rather than powered by it. Fyi, this confused me until I figured out what he was trying to do. Cool demonstration for anyone wondering why they call it a grounded line. Energy is always flowing through the environment, it is why solar power works, and why we have seasons. Each element and mineral, including the air, has preferred energetic states. They absorb energy from the sun's light/radiation and geothermal energy from conflicting gravity sources. They then release that energy into mostly natural process conductors/semiconductors in the environment to reach equilibrium like water seeking its' own level. In the atmosphere electrical storms release built up energy through lightning into the ground, completing nature's grounded circuit. Bless Y'all!
We had 2 boys that lived lived a block apart and another that lived in the middle. We took an old ping pong machine apart and salvaged the wire. It took a lot of stripping the ends and soldering to get a wire long enough to reach the whole block and of course we only had enough wire for 1 run. we used old loudspeakers on each end as microphone and speaker. We tried different grounds on each end but connecting to the water pipe at each house worked best. There was always a loud hum we tried everything to filter out but we could talk all night! I don't ever remember measuring the voltage but it entertained us for a long time! I think it was replaced by some 3 transistor hand held CB radios! This was mid 50"s.
Neat presentation.
Regarding your commentary about wanting more power [ 16:23 > 16:52 ] you cited you needed more surface area of your metal return. You could perhaps achieve this by using a few more fence post, EMT conduit, copper tubing, or several pieces of wire laid out like spokes of a wheel and inserted/buried under the ground. If you have some bare chain link fence, perhaps bury it under a few inches of soil and seed it over. I'm going to continue on below but it may look to be off topic but bear with me. It comes full circle to te ideal of conductive surface area.
In amateur radio, one of the ways we can increase band width for a radio band, especially the 75/80 band, is to increase the surface area of of the antenna. In the 75/80 band (3500 > 4000 kHz) a single wire antenna such as a dipole can not be used over the entire band without a a transmatch / antenna tuner. One way of achieving more bandwidth is to increase the cross section of the antenna elements, in the case of the dipole antenna. So your basic dipole may be made of wire the diameter of #14 or #12 stranded wire, .0641" and .0808 " respectively. Now let's say I want to increase the diameter of my antenna from the #12 diameter wire to an element of 8". While I could increase my band with, I now must somehow get 130' of 8" diameter metal up over head. The answer is the cage dipole.
TO increase my surface area for radio RX/TX, instead of having one lgth of 130' ( /2) I have six lengths (780" total) that are separated by spacers of say, that 8" diameter I was speaking of earlier. Do a search of "Cage dipole antenna" and you'll see pics; it will become clear Anyway, I am increasing the surface area for TX/RX signals over a wider bandwidth without having to actually pull bulky 8" diameter metal into the air. This principle would apply to your issue.
Example: A 1" copper pipe has a circumference of 4.131". 8" metal duct pipe has a circumference of 25.125" . So to get the same surface area of 25.125" provided by the 8" duct for your ground, you would need 7 lengths of 1" copper pipe totaling a total surface area just shy of 29".
So perhaps you could experiment by setting out bullseye from your existing post and set your 7 new copper post 53.43 degrees. Maybe a diameter of this ring could be 2' , 3', 4' etc from the existing post. With each configuration, take some copper wire from the tops of 7 copper post and run them back to your fence post and attach the seven wires to the center fence post. This way, you'll have a return path (pad?) where you have several points of ground potential;(Not sure if Ground potential is the proper word).
Regards,
John
i really like this comment just saying 🤔👍🤓✅
Are you saying that the surface area of the copper is more important in frequency transmission then the say using solid copper conductors? That would make sense as at higher frequencies the power travels outside of the actual wire? I like your impressive comment!
@@magncity1817
First, based on your comment it appears up have knowledge regarding radio signal transmission.
Yes to surface area in the spectrum we consider radio. Down in the 60 hz area of the frequency spectrum, which is the frequency of our AC electric that's in our homes, the current will use all of the volume of the conductor.
As frequency rises, more current will move to the outside of the conductor to be radiated into the air.
For the purpose the this Creator's SWER, my thinking that metal is a better conductor then earth itself. That said, I'm thinking that if he introduced metal to his circuit, he may get more ground potential ( not sure if that's the correct term I'm looking for).
The following is just off the cuff as I'm typing
Take a Dixie paper cup and a bath towel out in hard rain for like 30 seconds . You'll have some water in that paper cup but more water can be squeezed out of the bath towel. So which is better at collecting a volume of water a little cup= earth, or the towel=metal conductor?
Now, since I'm on a roll consider the 75/80 Amateur radio band, which spans 3.5 to 4.0 MHz. A simple balanced dipole antenna made of copper wire and cut to resonance at ,3.75MHz can be used on the entire band but a trans match will be needed to deal with the SWR on either side of the 3.75 MHz frequency. One solution is to use an antenna with elements of larger diameter, like some 8" duct work, put that's impractical. Enter the cage dipole (CD). The cage dipole uses more strands of wire the same length and overall as the simple two wire dipole. Spacers are used to keep the wires apart, say in a diameter of 8". Somehow, the current see four wires, spaced apart as a bigger area.
It will be easier to look up caged dipole then for me to try to explain it further.
@@kb3svj One may notice in the cage dipole that again the extra small conductors are same resonant length and in relative proximity in space to each other. And as you pointed out at RF the phenomenon manifests outside the wires. Thus, the immediate environment outside the wires is acting in unison which multiplies the “signal” much greater then just combining the wires together into one thicker wire. Rather the volume of this disturbance contained by the smaller multiple wires of same length is much greater then that of one larger diameter wire.
Logically then one would assume the volume of space surrounding the cage wires plays an important role.
Now we know that this cage antenna would work similarly in outer space as spacecraft also use RF transmissions. Thus we can discount the “air” as the major player.
It appears the space around the “cage” is placed in a resonant uniformity, aligned, which increases the power of the signal. This unison is also then present in outer space.
So then, the oscillating wires create in space both a magnetic and electric component. Interestingly, a change in magnetic field always creates movements in charges. So is it the magnetic field change creating a unison of charges (“electrons, charged particles, whatever). Or the other way around. Well in the cage antenna example it would seem that charges in the wire is the start which then change magnetic immediately in the volume next to the wire, thus we know as charges in the length of wire are in fact moving in resonance together as the length of the wires are the correct length for the chosen RF.
Now if the “towel” in your analogy is the exact volume of the paper cup, would not the paper cup have more water? Perhaps resonant transmission is greater in outer space?
So what we have described here is the true nature or value of resonance, the unity in the surrounding space. The farmer is not in a resonant situation so in order to improve his situation he must raise the voltage to many thousands of volts and depend upon polarization of the earth components at a high voltage and low current.
@@magncity1817 You are more like long winded then me :-) . I looked up a vid from Stan Gibilisco -W1GV (SK) on cage antenna if you want to look it up. He authored some great books
We had a 220 volt feed to a pump house ( two 110 volt leads, 180° out of phase). I was able to take one of those hot legs, and match it to a ground rod to get 110 volts for lights or power tools, similar to what you did.
Very true, as stated below. The Neutral wire/ Earth Ground, that you used, should have been landed on the silver screw on the receptacle. Also, the voltage will drop at 300ft, so you'll need to double the wire size, if it's aluminum, or your voltage drops.
The man below stated that the voltage will go to the next house. Probably not, in your situation, but in a city it is possible. But, the unused voltage will return to the Electrical Power Plant that it was generated from, not the closest ground, unless it is is a very close proximity.
I am a Master Electrician, if you have any questions in the future, please ask. I'll explain what will happen, an the dangers, if any. Very cool to show other's though, an can be very handy on the farm's. As long as there is no moisture on the top soil, an animal's are clear. Hit me up for questions boss, I can show you many neat ideas with electricity.
I'm a Class 1, Master, Journeyman Certified Electrician. Also, a Mobile Electronics Certified Professional, THX Surround Sound Certified Electrician. I have full understanding of Direct Current, an Alternating Current. Stay safe, an God Bless.
Sincerely,
Matt
I had to do it once before. I had an old man that had many acres. He had a big shed/barn about 300 yards from the main house and main electric panel. He had a dedicated 20 amp circuit running in conduit underground from the main panel, 300 yards to the barn. He only had 3 8 ft florescent light fixtures and 2 duplex outlets. He called me and said that the lights and outlets aren't working. I tested the breaker first to make sure it was on and 120 volts was coming out. I checked to make sure the neutral was connected (multimeter leads on breaker lug and to the neutral bus. I had 120 volts. I went to the barn, and my multimeter leads to the black and white coming out of the conduit. No voltage!!! I put my red lead on the black wire, and my black lead into the mud (ground), and I got a reading of 119 volts. Perfect!!! I told the old man that he lost a neutral somewhere in between the house and the barn, and it'ss possible that the ground shifting and settling broke the conduit and left the neutral vulnerable - or, maybe he was digging and hit the conduit and neutral with his tractor equipment and one of it's implements. Because of the voltage drop, I had to use 1000 feet of 6/2 wire. The wire alone was around $2700. The old man couldn't afford it. So, I picked up 15 ft of #4 'bare wire, 2 acorn clamps and 2 ground rods. I used the #4 bare wire going to 2 ground rods 6 ft apart for the return. It wasn't up to NEC standards and I'm sure it wasn't up to local code, but he was in the middle of the country, and no inspector is going to go out there. The old man just needed a few lights and an outlet or two...
It worked! I wouldn't advise it, but I took all safety precautions!!!
That is actually very dangerous at utility voltages and currents. An earth return goes to the generator source, not transformer or panel. You are tied into a utility, return is to their generator. All houses on the service are part of the circuit. It's important to understand that current paths through earth are unpredictable. If your neighbors house is closer than your panel, their panel ground will become part of your return path. If they have an unbonded pool between your two panels or unbonded plumbing in thier home, you can potentially kill them. Any underground metal pipes can also become a current path allowing current travel further than direct line. Further, stray currents will negatively effect dairy cows even at low levels if any are in the area. If you want to study safe earth returns, study the works of Nicola Teslas high frequency generators.
No, it's the transformer because each transformer in the distribution system becomes a new separately derived system. There is no physical wire connection from the secondary side of his transformer back to the power plant. But you are correct in that it will be very dangerous especially in a subdivision, or area where typically 2-3 houses share a transformer. Then the neutral current can and will take every available return path back to that center tap on the secondary winding, including the neighbors pool if it's fed from the same transformer. In this case, it looks like this guy's house in the video, he's in a rural area with his own 7200 volt feed onto the property, then his own transformer. So it's safe for temporary testing like this. See NEC section 250, "All transformers, except autotransformers, are separately derived because the primary circuit conductors do not have any direct electrical connection to the secondary circuit conductors."
@@brnmcc01 goat
Thx
@@brnmcc01-- thank you for clarifying that. (Retired electrician, worked with voltages as high as 22.3 KV; ALWAYS transformers.)
Underground pipes are an Nec approved source for grounding. Just like a ground rod, also neutrals and grounds are often on the same buss bar inside the main service panel.
This is exactly how electricity is "distributed" (read: stolen) throughout many informal settlements all over South Africa .. I'm sure many other parts of the world, too
Really? Interesting...
I actually used the swer method to try to power a fountain that I put in at my parent’s house, but my dad was afraid of the earth acting as the neutral and he was afraid of walking barefoot in his backyard, even though it is safe as it wasn’t carrying voltage, so I just ran a neutral wire to it to make him feel a bit better
This is so cool. Grandpa says l ain’t allowed to play with electricity since I blew the wall socket and bout knocked myself out trying to make an electromagnet.
Very cool video! Would have been interesting to see how incandescent bulbs fared. (you know you have some stashed away, wink, wink) Did you see any worms come out of the ground when you did this experiment? As a kid we did something similar to get fishing bait. Got a hell of a shock once or twice by kneeling on the damp ground while poking the electrodes into the ground with the power on. I miss the days when parents really didn't know what to pay attention to with their kids. LOL
Does the larger bulb indicate what it's capable to do. Such as incandescent bulbs.
Showing it had power and able to light it up.
@@WhoU8 Good quality (emphasis on good) LED bulbs can run on lower (and higher) voltages than what they are rated for. The power supply in these are similar to a computer rather than an incandescent bulb. What will happen is when you run, say a good LED bulb rated at 120VAC is fed 80VAC the bulb will work at full lumen rating but it’s life expectancy is greatly reduced as the power supply used to power the LEDs will run hot to provide the current required to activate the LED(s) at their full lumens. On the other hand, the incandescent would work fine but it would be visibly dimmer than its rating.
It did not TRIP the breaker when you did try this with the earth WORM rod into the ground.
So the earth return ( to the transformer) was working then. GFCI breaker did trip.
Thank you. Did not expect the larger bulb to function.
Larger lamp has flyback converter in power supply, so it started from lower voltage increasing current and causing bigger voltage drop.
Hi Ben, at 71, I found out how to bend a solid wire for wiring an outlet, by watching your video lol! Very interesting video, thank you!
I went to school with a guy who's dad was a farmer. To get power in the field for power tools he would throw a wire over a power line and connect the other side of the plug to the earth.
This channel from from being apprentice electrician to engineering mindset on the field.
This is the second time I've been surprised at how low your ground resistance is on the way back to the transformer. I like your demo of voltage drop very near to the post. It highlights how a dog might get a shock if he were to piddle on the fence post while current is flowing, creating an alternate lower resistance path compared to the path across the ground rod. I guess it makes sense that most of the drop is in the earth near each ground post, since deeper in the earth there is more water and electrolyte that permits a lower resistance path.
Agree
@spelunkerd - That dog would never lift a leg for the rest of his life! 🤣🤣
Also just called an earth ground and I always assumed this was just common knowledge for anyone who understands the basics of electricity
The early telegraph was a one wire system. They abandoned it because it was too easy to tap into and people were listening to other people’s mail.
Good to see you back with a new video!! Thank you!! Keep up the good work!!
Nice Video and simple dialog on topic.
Not to be a Safety Sally, but saw you point without your electrical gloves at lugs in the panel. I haze a buddy of mine that loves to point at connections in a box and he gets much closer than you did. A big deal nope, just bad practice.
A video on your gloves and testing of internal liners would be great to educate some.
When I was 14 my friend showed me his brother's stereo... this was really futuristic stuff and we weren't supposed to be in his older brother's room... who was an electronic tech who worked on the DEW line (cold war radar up north). Brother came in and he saw the plywood box with toggle switches and a telephone hand set attached I was holding. He didn't say anything about us being in his room and touching his very, very expensive stereo. He asked about my box. It was one of three telephone boxes we made to use at camp to talk to each other. He showed us how, using scrap radio transformers, scrap biggest capacitors we could find in the radio, and then how to make a one line phone system using exactly this process. We converted the variable dc to a higher voltage with the transformers, then fed one line into the ground by way of a capacitor and the other wire to the other phone. He also showed us how to convert scrap tube radios or transistor radios into amplifiers by tapping into the audio circuit.
Well I learned more than I expected. I never knew the hole in the wire stripper was used for bending the wire. Thanks for that little nugget. Good Vid!
If you've ever used electricity to collect earth worms this is how the wiring for worm prods work. Stick prods into moistens ground, plug in, collect worms, don't kneel or glad worms too close to prods, get about a dozen and go fishing. :)
He has: th-cam.com/video/uxEYMFRxLuA/w-d-xo.html
@@donkey-fart Nice, it's kinda the same thing minus the light bulb. Thanks for the link Brandon. :)
that was freaking amazing!!!! You are super awesome! I learned alot
I did the same thing with an underground sprinkler system with an open circuit common. Instead of digging 400' of yard and replacing it I dropped a ground rod in the control valve box and used it as my return. Worked for years until a second lightning strike which knocked out all of the zones led me to the original location of the open circuit. Turned out to have been underground splices burned by a lightning strike. Took out the well wiring, pump and outside lights as well.
To get a better grounding effect, a goodly bit of [deep] buried copper window screen works wonderfully. To make the circuit even stronger, turn the power off first and then piss on the ground at the grounds. The moisture and the salts will combine to make a stronger circuit. At the cost of redundancy, TURN THE POWER OFF FIRST! You will re-power it when you are done with the installation ... AFTER you are done pissing on the earth. I used this for decades to get good connections in seemingly dry ground on the ranch.
I can say for a fact that a single wire buried (and damaged) will eventually trip a breaker, but it might take days or weeks before the heat builds up enough to destroy the insulation, then expose enough wire to reach the trip point. This happened in my neighbor's garden when they hit a direct burial wire for their lamp post. When we dug it up the outer sheath was blistered about 5 ft long. On doing this with a gen set it won't work due to the gen set not having an earth ground / neutral. Yes, you could add one but the set doesn't rely on one to operate.
I would have liked to see you use that ~45v gradient near the fencepost to power something - I think you should have been able to power a small lightbulb with just the probes in the dirt, and no wires connected directly.
Yes you can. I use a DC to ac converter with a old battery .I was able to power a light bulb with one wire in dirt and one connected to source . I did it at about 10 ft away from power source . I was surprised the dirt is in fact a conductor
I have gotten shocks from electrodes I was placing for Fall Of Potential testing.
The run while getting your pets away 🤣 instant LIKE
back in the 60's used a single wire to pull a contactor on a irrigation pump a few hundred feet away. Used steel fence wire and a transformer to boost the voltage to over come losses. worked fine for years
This reminds me of when I used my ddm and put one probe on a hot line and another into the dirt and got ~120v
0.1 amps dropping 8 volts implies that the ground part of the circuit has a resistance of about 80 ohms. Which is more than a return wire would have, but not too shabby.
This blew my mind, interesting experiment and superb explanation 👍
As an Electrical trainee, thank you very much for your videos
use proper ppe🧤🥾, leave your sleepers at home no matter how thick is the sole 🤔
@ Benjamin...could one limit the ground surface voltage if one were to use a stake that is insulated? For example ... The pole is 2ft deep into the ground, 18inches of which are insulated, all the way up to the connection point on the top, where the recepticle is attached. Could that potentially make this set up safer for your animals? Thank man. This was very interesting vid. Thank you! I learned something new.🙂
A "Scariac"? Not wise...
Try holding a 4 or 8 foot fluorescent lamp up in the air under a utility power tower when the humidity is high and you can hear the lines buzzing.
The lamp will glow. Even a bad lamp will glow. I have won a bunch of bets pulling that on people.
Hold it by the glass, don't touch the metal connector end. Ask me how I know.
I was getting transformers unloaded at a municipal electric yard and they had me park under some very big transmission lines to do it. I was standing on my aluminum trailer deck and could feel the tingle and the hair on my head stood up. I did not like that at all.
“See you later!” They were probably the neighbors, left town & are still driving till this day to escape this madman who proved the power in the ground..
Watched a Mike Holt video where they pounded 50 feet of rod to get a low impedence ground and hooked up a 120 volt feed to it. Breaker would not trip. Just sat there consuming over 5 amps.
Haven't watched this whole video yet but Benjamin already did a similar experiment. Did you watch that video?
Another way might be the same way the utilities do it: transformers to high voltage for the run then step it back down at the load. You would have less loss, the resistance of the ground would be less of a problem.
you could do that, but then you'd need to insulate the feed wire better,. at 3500V (from a microwave oven transformer) wire-nuts and THHN are not going to cut it.
@@randomblogger2835 Microwave transformer is 2100V not 3500.
Tesla, through and through! Nicely done.
Tesla was a crazy genius but after getting duped several times by Edison and Westinghouse he went from crazy genius to just crazy and broke.
You’re a great teacher. I stayed interested through the entirety.👌
Great video and nice to see you younger people interested in this!
"It really shouldn't be super dangerous..." But dangerous enough to put the dogs in the house.
I submitted a code years ago regarding ungrounded well casings. Well pump had a short in water not tripping the breaker. Short story the NEC adopted code to ground submersible well pump casings.kind of the same situation you demonstrated 👍
what was the voltage? depth? location?
@@texasfossilguy the well was next to a dr. House, kids were getting shocks when getting out of the unground pool. Another instance at a local farm cows were dying in their stalls, when they would drink from medal water system. Pump wire had a Nic inside the medal well casing .
The algo is going to love this one.
VERY INTERESTING! I know this idea goes back many many years - some telegraph systems used just one wire and Tesla talked about such... Still Thanks for the experiment!
One of my first instructors that I had during my electrical apprenticeship told a story of a farmer he new who ran an electrical pump motor using SWER to pump water out a pond for his livestock. He just had to remember to not pick up the pump until he switched off the AC. Scary stuff!!
Bottom of the post is usually painted too so it might be better voltage with a better ground rod... wouldn't it?
At first I thought this was a "free energy" video..........but it's explaining electric principles, and that's very cool.
I'm convinced by this video, Benjamin, that you are most definitely the brightest bulb in the box!
This was a common method for bringing power to farm homes in rural America in the 30's and 40's. it saved utilitie companies money for wire used.
Tesla was convinced that he could collect electricity from the ground.
I've done the same thing to drive an audio speaker at a distance using only one wire.
In the old days, direct wire fire and burglar alarm systems also used earth return; one single-pair phone line can connect two different alarm systems to a central monitoring station using the earth as the return path.
Single wire ground return wiring was common on farms many years ago...
Your videos are truly appreciated ..even in Huntsville Ontario Canada 💯 the ideas are fresh and I was even telling this 80 yr pld gardner how to get worms 😂I hope he remembers when i said to unplug the power supply before picking up ..but hey its a better way to go then covid 🤔
A hundred years ago single wire systems were common even with communications equipment. I suspect they were prone to frequent problem due to electrogalvanism. I heard Tesla initially ran such a system at his first generating plant in Niagra with 20,000 volt generators. But whenever someone through the knife switch a strange bluish gaseous like discharge left the lines and would electrocute whomever was present near switch or lines. Tesla investigated and determined a 2,000,000 volt discharge was occuring. His solution was to use a return line or 2 wire system like today. The reason for 2 mill discharge was the voltage/coulome pressure pumping in the wire with no where to go, Maxwell predicted scalar wave value remaining after 2 voltage amplitudes are phase canceled. When the switch was thrown static voltage pressure collapsed as it began to flow unhinderd through line. This caused scalar field to collapse as well. This was what led to his subsequent invention of Tesla coil and research in Colorado lab where he developed wireless power transmission system.
Great video buddy! If the hot wire could be eliminated that would really be something.This shows just how well grounded that the Adam's family's Uncle Fester was.
By the way I loved that full moon rising in the background.
I use that same sc440 meter doing hvac, love it.