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  1. #11
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    Aug 2002
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    Buffalo
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    Default

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    The apprentice in WA that was recently killed would be alive today if the crew had praticed EPG

  2. #12

    Default I disagree

    grounding trucks gives a false sense of security. If your relays are set correctly and you get a large enough rise in fault current, a grounded truck will trip the circuit.

    At the end of a long line it will see it as load and just pump more current to the circuit. Your gonna be crispy either way if you are in contact with that vehicle when it becomes energized.

    Current will take ALL paths back to its source. Not only the best. ALL Paths! That means if you are in contact with a grounded vehicle when it is contacting a source of energy, and you are at a different potential, current is going to flow through you! You are in series with the circuit.

    That poor apprentice wouldn't have been helped by EPZ unless the building was bonded to the truck, and there was a bonding mat to stand on as well. Touching a truck and a metal building is going to put you at different potentials. Then you will get a voltage rise and subsequent current flow. subsequent death!

    Ground your vehicles. Hopefully no-one is touching it and standing on the ground too. As I said, a false sense of security!

    You need to Look up! Talk to the operator. Wear your rubber gloves, and wearing 20 KV rubber boots would be an added plus. An epz mat bonded to the vehicle with a rubber blanket to make the transition on and off of the mat.

    Use your brain! Don't be another person talked about in the past tense.

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
    Location
    Buffalo
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    Quote Originally Posted by 500 KVA View Post
    grounding trucks gives a false sense of security. If your relays are set correctly and you get a large enough rise in fault current, a grounded truck will trip the circuit.

    At the end of a long line it will see it as load and just pump more current to the circuit. Your gonna be crispy either way if you are in contact with that vehicle when it becomes energized.

    Current will take ALL paths back to its source. Not only the best. ALL Paths! That means if you are in contact with a grounded vehicle when it is contacting a source of energy, and you are at a different potential, current is going to flow through you! You are in series with the circuit.

    That poor apprentice wouldn't have been helped by EPZ unless the building was bonded to the truck, and there was a bonding mat to stand on as well. Touching a truck and a metal building is going to put you at different potentials. Then you will get a voltage rise and subsequent current flow. subsequent death!

    Ground your vehicles. Hopefully no-one is touching it and standing on the ground too. As I said, a false sense of security!

    You need to Look up! Talk to the operator. Wear your rubber gloves, and wearing 20 KV rubber boots would be an added plus. An epz mat bonded to the vehicle with a rubber blanket to make the transition on and off of the mat.

    Use your brain! Don't be another person talked about in the past tense.
    Yes of coarse we’re talking grounding mattes and bonding the building the pole the truck everything the worker may come in contact with. The other option would be to rubber up the primary and maintain your minimum approach distance. Using a dedicated spotter. And have everyone in rubber gloves and EH rated boots. Let’s face it, many times when the digger rolls out in the morning you don’t have a bucket with you. As I understand it this pole set was mid span with the primary 25 feet from the ground and in close proximity to the building. I’ll Say IT AGAIN EQUIPOTENTIAL GROUNDING WOULD HAVE SAVED THIS MANS LIFE.

  4. #14

    Default ????????????????????????????????????????????????

    How do you bond to a customers building? That is nonsense!

    Bond to a pole too? With what? # 6 copper. Where do you run that? To a ground rod that you will be walking around and flirting with the step potential, or maybe wrapping around yourself as well.

    How many mats do we put out? 20? 40? Lets wrap the building too.

    Placing a shield around the top of the pole would work.

    Rubbering the phases is a great idea as well. Cover everything up. That'll work fine.

    Another way to do it:

    Think about what is going on and what could happen.
    Take a step back and look around. Do a tailboard. Talk to each other.
    Look up. Don't assume anything.
    Don't touch the truck, and try to keep away from the truck if possible.
    Don't get between anything. The pinch factor if nothing else.
    Wear rubber gloves and Boots. WEAR IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    You can EPZ all you want in this situation. But if he would have followed Apprentice Lineman 201 then we wouldn't be discussing this at the moment.
    Last edited by 500 KVA; 05-11-2007 at 05:47 PM. Reason: ?

  5. #15
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    Aug 2002
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    Buffalo
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    I’m sure you could figure out some way to ground the building and ten mats would be enough. Using pole guards and rubber would work. The fact is some hands aren’t using anything and we read about the fatalities all the time. Something needs to change. Wearing rubber gloves and boots would be the easiest way but I guarantee In the middle of summer a lot of lineman will say screw it… I’m just spotting the pole and the boom will be no where near the primary. You can say stay away from the pole and truck but many times the guy on the ground is trying to maneuver the pole in position. We had PAR contractors on the property a few years ago and they had a double fatality and five injured simply unloading Transmission arms. I don’t know what the answer is but something’s got to change or these fatalities are going to keep on happening

  6. #16

    Question Questions and more Questions

    Very good questions 500. We have a new policy, it’s mandatory to ground our trucks now. We’ve asked all the questions but have not got any good answers. We had a guy from AB CHANCE give training. Each job site is different. Each work zone is different. #6 copper for a ground, the substation could see it as load, touch step potential is a big one, what if there is a metal fence on the job site, the list goes on. We were legal the way we worked before. Cover, cover and more cover. The feeder is on one shot on all jobs, we use pole grads for every pole set, wear rubber gloves for ever pole set, wing out phases, documented tail boards on all jobs, stay off the trucks, safety watch we did it all.
    Last edited by PA BEN; 05-26-2007 at 09:20 AM.

  7. #17

    Default I ask again

    EPZ. How many Companies out there REQUIRE grounding of your trucks and those of you that do ground your trucks, how do you set up your work zone to protect ground personal? IE; bounding the truck together, ground mats, barricades and what do you uas for barricades, etc?

  8. #18

    Default

    I went to the Incident-Prevention in Nashville. Our company wants us to ground our trucks. The problem is we have a Unidelta system and we only tie the transformer down at the sub. There is no system neutral to hook to and they said in Nashville that a screw down ground is no good. So I dont have a clue what to ground my truck to. Our engineer does not agree with what we were told in Nashville about a screw down ground and that we will still use it to ground our trucks.

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
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    That's why a trampbag has handles.....
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    424

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    Hi Kid and welcome,

    If you read the third post in this thread, mine, you will discover how I am feeling about this horseshit. You nailed it.

    I worked for a company once that demanded that the trucks be grounded, had to have a ground rod, and bounded. They supplied screw in ground rods 3 ½ feet long for this purpose. The GFs used to visit the sites at least twice a day and always checked to see that we were following company policy. Because we were working on roads and sidewalks, both concrete, and were close to the properties which had concrete or brick walls there was absolutely no place to screw in the grounds. Of course it was a delta system as well. Bet you can’t guess what we had to do?

    You betcha. We tied the trucks together and connected to the ground rod and threw it under one of the trucks. It complied with company policy.

    Fat lot of f**king good that would do tripping the circuit. Pity the ground men that had a 60’ X 8’ kill zone to deal with if things went south.

    Things would have been much better if the screw in ground rod had been shoved up the Safety Engineers ass.

    I can now imagine someone coming on here and saying that cover up would stop an unnecessary fatality under this situation or asking if the crew was wearing their rubber gloves.

    Just a thought.
    Last edited by Trampbag; 05-13-2007 at 10:47 PM.
    Have Trampbag, Will Travel

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  10. #20

    Default screw grounds

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    I am going to try and find a video that our safety dept. showed us on screw grounds. The video shows fault current applied to the screwed in ground rod. That joker looked like the space shuttle taking off. We are required to use them if we cannot reach the pole bond but we stay clear of that the same we do the truck.

    False sense of security we had for a long time. There are a lot of opinions but what is the real answer to keep us safe, and will the right answer today be the wrong one tommorrow.

    You are your brothers keeper on a line crew, cover all the asses on site.

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