Re: Safety of Running Coil in Garage

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com>

If you are only running 15kV/60mA you should have no problem whatsoever in
your garage.  Just make sure you ground your secondary from an outside
ground (a 6ft. rod hammered in the ground will work well).  Just don't
connect the RF ground of your secondary to your house ground.  If you had
only a 4kV/20mA coil, this would be fine, but at about 1kW with your
15kV/60mA you really need a dedicated ground.

If I remember correctly, Ed Wingate once told me he first ran his huge
magnifier coil in his basement before he built his outbuilding and that
streamers were going up from the basement
to the first floor!!!

Dan


 > Hey,
 >
 > I've finished my first coil and the sparks are adequate at best. I would
 > like to experiment with it more, but currently I can only do it at night
 > because I can't see the sparks during the day. I would like to run it in
my
 > garage but am worried about damaging the electronics in the house. What
can
 > I do to be safe in the garage or should I just not run it there? There is
a
 > garage door unit and a light close to where it would be running. Also, the
 > family computer is directly behind the garage wall. So, there's not much
 > physical distance between it and the coil(about 10-15ft). My second
 > question is: how big should the sparks be from a coil powered by 2
 > 15kv/30ma transformers(15kv/60ma total)?
 > There are 11 primary turns, about 1400 secondary turns if i remember on a
 > 4.25" x 23" pvc secondary with 27awg wire with a .03 uf 35kv maxwell cap.
 >
 > Thanks,
 > Alan
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >