electocution

Aaron

Tech4 is right. A "ground fault circuit interrupter" won't do any good if there is no ground fault to detect. A generator can't create ground fault unless it's somehow grounded.

You don't see a lot of GFCI's in hospitals. That's because virtually all medical equipment uses isolation transformers to "float" the patient side from ground.

Had a friend (a roofer/sider) that was redoing a house that he'd just bought for him and his fiance' whom were supposed to be married in a few weeks. Siders use light weight aluminum scaffolding, and thats what he was standing on when his head touched the service ahead of the meter. His scaffold was in morning dewy grass. A neighbor girl came out to play and found him lying on the ground, boots still smoldering. No wedding for a usually careful friend whom had been doing roofing and siding for ions, was happier than I'd ever knew him after she said "yes" to his proposal. She was a mess at his funeral, as were most.

No, the welder wouldn't be too concerned, because his welding wires are around 50 volts. High enough to give you a good shock, but not necessarily lethal. (Not lethal on dry ground that is.)

Aaron

My GUESS is that, unless you are still holding the tool while it and you are in the water, the electricity in the stream will be so diffuse and short-lived before it pops the breaker (assuming your generator has one) that you probably won't have much electrical energy flowing through you.

If you are holding a wet tool and standing/swiming in the water, then you'd be a more direct path between the electric source and the ground - that would probably hurt.

Gerald J.

This is an issue I've always wondered about, too. In the movie scene of someone being killed by having an electrical appliance thrown into the bathtub with them, I always wondered if electricity would actually flow through the relatively poor conductor of a human body rather than through the relatively good conductor of dirty bathwater before it blew the fuse or tripped the breaker as it shorted to the plumbing ground. The situation you describe seems even more problematic.

As for the situation with the welding, I have two observations: Aside from the above question of where electrical current in the water would actually go, welding voltage is usually below 20 volts while the arc is going. The voltage at the stinger when there's no arc is closer to 80 volts across the open circuit, but I don't know what it is in relation to earth ground. Second, while some weldors are guys who were trained as physicists, rocket scientists, and brain surgeons, and decided to go into welding instead, many aren't. What a weldor does based on his understanding of electrical engineering issues wouldn't necessarily be the final word on safe operating procedures (although many have enough personal experience to know very well how things work, of course.)

All the best, Stan

Now that is truly thinking outside the box. Great! You just went way, way up on my list of people whose postings I always want to read.

All the best, Stan

I don't know how dangerous it would be, but I've seen the little hand crank generators (from telephones) bring up a lot of fish. I could only imagine what a 30-60 amp generator with 3000-5000 watts of power would do to a human in a body of water.