Electrical Substations - measuring emissions - help needed

[jopp]

I'm about to purchase a property and have found out there's an electrical substation in the near vicinity (well two in fact, one is slightly further away at 210m). I've contacted UK Power Network who owns the substation but they say that they cannot send someone round to do a site survey to test emissions until I own the property (not v helpful!). Nor can they tell me what type of substation it is.

I was wondering if anyone has managed to get the electricity company round before exchanging contracts and if so how they managed it. Any advice/suggestions would be great. I just want to find out the strength of the emissions and whether they would be of any harm to babies/young kids.

[nad29]

Hi jopp. We are in exactly the same position and i was wondering what you ended up doing. did you go through with the house purchase?? any advice would be gratefully received. thanks

[PigletJohn]

are there overhead cables on high pylons? AFAIK the only health concerns that seem to have any credibility relate to Transmission cables which are very high voltage. If you look at these on a dark rainy night you may see plasma or sparks on the insulators. It is unusual for them to run over peoples houses, and I would not want to live under one.

These little garage-sized substations are all over the place. Wherever you live there is bound to be one within half a mile or so.

[wildheaven]

There's quite a lot of information on the internet about this. From memory the average one emits very little compared to what we absorb through all our appliances and wifi. Pylons and overhead cables are a different matter entirely.
Nevertheless the negative vibes put us off the house we were looking at where the commercial owner was proposing to build one not far from the end of the garden.

[Bensony]

The problem is that the UK regulations don?t take any health issues into account, period....that is, they are concerned with electric-shock issues not biological ones!! So the electric company can only measure very high levels!!

The guidelines that do consider biological and cellular issues are The SAGE Report which is funded equally by the Department of Health, the Electricity Industry and the charity CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA and also The Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines which was commissioned by the German government.

Try your search-engine on, substation health risks, there is a lot of interesting information.

[PigletJohn]

there are quite a lot of links by companies who prey on ill-informed fears and hope to sell a profitable survey and report to the credulous.

[PigletJohn]

I do apologise for my scepticism.

You see, the last time we had a few threads of this kind appear, they came from new members who'd joined and put up posts about substation dangers, and very quickly afterwards, up popped replies from people selling surveys, almost as if they'd been sitting there waiting.

I guess I'm just cursed with a suspicious nature.

And then two of them crop up on the same day, writtem by the same person, who's never posted anything else.

Who'd a thought it, eh?