Electrocuted while cooking a pizza?

[jtedesco1]

http://www.nachi.org/forum/editpost.php

[Greg Fretwell]

They should be looking at the circuit it was plugged into.
A ground fault in an appliance should trip the O/C device and it is likely there should be a GFCI on that circuit too.

[John Bowman]

Man, is this one of those freak accidents or what. What a shame.

[Richard L. Bennett]

A micro wave oven can fail and kill - while hard to do but one can get the full high voltage power supply on the case. Depending on the Mfg this is around 5000 volts at 600 ma. That will hurt you real bad.

Like all electrical ckts one must have a complete one -- something going in and something going out.

GFCI will not stop all shocks or deaths

I should not take long to find out how this death was caused. Lawyers are probably already working late on the lawsuits

rlb

rlb

[msaxton]

Joe, if you follow this could you post the results here, would be interesting to see what they determine

[Greg Fretwell]

Richard, if the high voltage did manage to contacte the case, where would the return path be? This is an isolated secondary and if it contacted the case you would just have a grounded 6kv supply, referenced to the other end of the supply, inside the unit. I doubt anyone would ever notice, unless it put lines on the TV or something.
I really believe this had to be a 120v fault, perhaps a chafed wire to a door interlock, combined with a bad/missing ground in the receptacle or a cut off ground pin on the cord cap.
The same thing could have happened with a table lamp. The "microwave" thing just makes it sound more mysterious and newsworthy.

[Paul W. Abernathy]

Also if built in Microwave it would not have a GFCI on it anyway.....so it would be a moot point on the GFCI part.....now if counter top model might be another story.

[Richard L. Bennett]

Greg

The return path question is open -- My point was the high voltage. The how one gets to be a complete ckt is hard to see even if it was a 120 volt fault

He had to be in contact with something else - sink etc

rlb

[gbeaumont]

Hi to all,

this story comes from England, remember we use 240 volts at 50 htz there.

Regards

Gerry

[Paul W. Abernathy]

Yikes...now I am not English and frankly I dont know...but they dont have any 120V over their...?........dang glad I am not wiring in England...

[Doug Edwards]

Gerry,
With all that available power why the hell do you drink warm beer?

Yur bud,

Doug

[Paul W. Abernathy]

He likes it to taste just as bad going IN as it probably does going out.....Those Englishmen

[gbeaumont]

Originally Posted by pabernathy

He likes it to taste just as bad going IN as it does going out.....Those Englishmen

hell, what do you guys know about beer? Spritewieser is your national brew

Regards

"The Brit"

[Paul W. Abernathy]

lol....Coors Light Baby...COORS Light....think of me when you head out to that PUB tonight....order a COORS Light and get it COLD...enough of that dark warm english stuff...thehehehe

[Doug Edwards]

Gerry,
You wont get an arguement from me on that one. Actually I tend to like the brews out of Pennsylvania and Canada. I have been to your homeland a time or two and they didn't actually drink it warm but rather just cool. Now when I was in Scotland they had a habit of putting lime juice in a lager and calling it fit to drink. But after the first 5 or 6 you don't really care too much what the hell it taste like. There are actually worse beer in the world than American. Italy has one called "Peroni" where you can develope the headache first before you get the buzz. And in Egypt it really reminds one of horse pi** which is remarkable since they are the ones who are supposed to have invented beer.