How close is too close? Houses near EMF

Currently in the market for a home. Unfortunately, one of the areas we are looking at has a 69kV line running right down the middle of it. One home we are looking at is 500' away from this line. Have a few buddies that work in the T-line business and their consensus seems to be "if you cant hear a crackle, don't worry about it".

Anyone have any experience with this?

Of course, armchair engineers are welcome to participate

 

69kV at 500ft shouldn’t concern you.

 

69kV is relatively low for transmission lines. I work in a Hydropower plant that produces 115kV and 230kV and guys spend their whole career working around it.

I would agree with your line buddy, if nothing else I wouldn't want to live next to that noise 24/7.

A cool way to test to see if you're in the electrical field; hold a good sized magnet under the power lines, if you're close enough the magnet will vibrate and dance around in your hand

 

Live near a power distribution center, near like 10 blocks, all our lines are buried. No apparent issues, maybe some light poltergeist like activity. Nothing too crazy, maybe some random levitation here and there.

 

I’m an engineer in the HV T-line space. The crackle is corona discharge and voltage dependent, not load. EMF though is based on electrical loading and distance. That being said, 69kV is usually not that much of a concern.

I’d be more concerned about the 69kV poles if they were wood and whether the line is properly grounded.

 

I stayed at a Holiday Inn a year ago, I say there should not be any worries. There ya go!

 

The biggest concern would be resale values.

 

Yeah, hopefully it’d be a wash on purchase/sale in terms of decrease. I also don’t see the shortage of SoCal housing ending anytime soon

 

P

Seriously? I’m gonna try that sometime..

 

<scratching in notepad>
get a magnet
go by some high voltage lines

 

I haven't tried it outside, the lines might be too far away. It definitely works inside the powerhouse next to the Iso-phase bus work coming off of the generator (15kV).

I'll check later and see if someone has it on YT

 

You have nothing to worry about, you’re not close enough.

I grew up in the country and we had a 345kv line running about 1200’ away from us. My grandparents were even closer to the same lines. They hang ~50’ above the ground. If it was humid enough you could hear the crackle from the house.

You’d get shocked from the sheet metal of your car if you parked underneath them. We had to get rid of our metal mailbox for that reason, it was right underneath the power lines. Feels a bit like licking a 9V battery but on your skin.

 

where I park, here at the whse park, we have 138kV lines running.

I'm not far from them.

and clearly they have not stunted my growth...quite the opposite.

 

Don't give others ideas....

But OP, when I was shopping for a house, wife and I both agreed that we want nothing to do with power lines/poles on/near the property.
Fast forward to now, the regular line is maybe 100 ft away from the house, those high voltage ones? A couple of miles if I even remember them.....

 

So you're saying its possible to harness electricity coming off these lines.. maybe at the cost of your looks or sanity? I'll take it!

About a mile from me (another area we are looking) are a 69, 138 and 230 all strung together. Can definitely hear those suckers hum. Not too good with numbers, but assume its just simple arithmetic adding them together. More of a shapes/geometry guy..

Definitely quite a few wooden poles around here.. good info. Thanks!

My friend said the same thing when he was watching a diabetic cat and it was injection time. Sparkles was fine.. buddy's hand; not so much.

 

Have a small parasitic drain on the truck.. think its enough for a trickle charge?

 

Agreed on not wanting to be near them, but unfortunately this line goes right down the center of where we'd like to be as shown below..


We'll figure it out! Anything I can do to prevent my brain from turning into microwaved scrambled eggs is appreciated . But it seems everyone here is on board with it.. at least me doing it.

 

Yea, sometimes it is hard and just have to take whatever the best you can.

 

Digging way back to undergrad physics here - so double check me.

High voltage AC outputs gamma and alpha radiation. This can be picked up by either EMF or a Geiger-Mueller (can't remember). There are 'safe limits' to long term exposure and some people have a greater tendency to be more impaired by this radiation.

 

Definitely impacts people differently. Drove past Chernobyl maybe 15 years or so ago. Pretty wild.. beautiful country up there. Still crazy to me that a couple of the original liquidators are still alive

 

Don't take me the wrong way, but I think after what happened in Chernobyl and it was left alone to nature, it was beautiful the way it turned out to be, minus the radiation.

 

I grew up a couple blocks away from some high KV overhead transmission lines.
As kids we'd go out at night and do our best Luke Skywalker impersonations with a 4 foot fluorescent tube "light saber."
Good times.
I'm sure that has nothing to do with the current state of my brai.... Ooooh...squirrel!

 

For sure. Check out the mini series they made on it; its pretty good.

 

That's awesome