Shocking! careful with the electricity here...

[LostinBA]

I was just jolted out of complacency with 240V of pure (probably poorly regulated) Argentine electricity. Go Edenor!

While plugging in my iron this morning I received a jolt like never before...which was followed in the same spot by an ongoing noisy little sparky/fire ball that continued until I turned off the master switch.

I have what seems to be the electric "entry" wound which hurts like hell but no exit wound so either I got extremely lucky or my super powers should start to kick in anytime now.

Why is it that nothing about this surprises me? Another case of be "blessed with a population whose expectations could hardly be lower?"

Anyway, be careful with the electricity here.

 

[solerboy]

Shouldnt this have been posted in current affairs ?

 

[LostinBA]

haha. Took me a minute but very good!

 

[Matt84]

That sounds awful,

Can you describe your switchbox?

What 'brand's the iron? Was the wire in decent state?

Sorry for your shock, thanks for raising awareness

 

[ElQueso]

Yeah I recently (about 6 months ago) had my apartment worked on by three different electricians.

I had a problem with the main fuse at the building's supply board blowing every other day from overload. Of course, the fuse is something out of the 50's or earlier - a ceramic tube with some kind of metal cap on each end with a raw braided wire (14 gauge or so I think) strung between the metal caps. The wire melted when it got too hot. We have 13 apartments in our building, and only three have a modern breaker. The portero was in charge of stringing the new wire every time someone's box blew.

The building was built in the late 80s.

The third guy who finally came had a number of boxes and outlets opened and was showing me where over the years various wires had been spliced to existing circuits, often not even taped up, NEVER with a proper splicing cap. It was really insane looking at what had been done.

He finally fixed my problem by fixing all the splices and in two cases rerouting the circuit to another, less-heavily loaded circuit.

Be careful with electricity here, for sure.

 

[LostinBA]

That sounds awful,

Can you describe your switchbox?

What 'brand's the iron? Was the wire in decent state?

Sorry for your shock, thanks for raising awareness

I realize now that in fact this is a perfect storm of Argentine incompetence. During the 2 hottest weeks of the summer, a water leak from the balcony above (standard Argentine shitty construction) was interfering with my air conditioning was blowing the fuses and keeping my air conditioning off during the 2 hottest weeks of summer. The electrician's solution was to bypass the master fuse in the switchbox and make a direct connection to Edenor. He said this would only be for the air conditioning and be repeatedly reassured me that it would be 100% safe. The master fuse/switch is not connected to anything. I don't know exactly how to explain it. I'm no handyman but the short at the base of the wires was flaring continually like one of those flares you see at the soccer games and making alot of noise until I flipped all the switches.

So either the iron was bad (my mistake...it's Chinese), or the electricity spiked (maybe both) and the wiring was altered to basically kill and/or start a serious fire.

So why am I telling you all? Just be careful...even when tradesman here ASSURE you of something, you still have to find out for yourself. I'm not being overly dramatic to say that I could have been killed this morning. 240 volts is enough to do some serious damage to your health and well-being.

 

[Crema Americana]

Wow, how scary!

Yep, you have to be really careful with electric outlets here. There's one at work that always throws a spark anytime something is plugged in... and here at the house I have the opposite problem in that half the outlets don't work or plugs fall straight out of them. Shoddy shoddy work... for electric lines that kind of work simply isn't acceptable.

Glad you're safe. It's a shame tradesmen aren't more trustworthy here.

 

[Gringoboy]

Neither does anything seem to be earthed.
Out of interest, anyone know the official voltage rating?
As far as I can gather, it's supposed to be 220V with a tolerance of +/-6%.
Worth checking with a multimeter, but taking care of course.
It's not 'clean' lecky. Some days it's 185v, well out of tolerance.
Lower values can severely affect sensitive devices.

 

[steveinbsas]

Neither does anything seem to be earthed.

I has my house grounded (earthed) last year.

I learned my lesson in Mexico where they call it "tiera fisica"`(with 110v AC which isn't nearly as shocking as 220 DC!).

 

[scotttswan]

I has my house grounded (earthed) last year.

I learned my lesson in Mexico where they call it "tiera fisica"`(with 110v AC which isn't nearly as shocking as 220 DC!).

Argentina uses AC too