Help! Would you live next to an electrical substation?

[MissTea]

We?ve found the ideal flat to buy and have had our offer accepted, but have just found out that there is a small electrical substation at the end of the garden! I?ve tried to read up on the possible link between living near sources of electromagnetic radiation and childhood cancers but the evidence seems pretty inconclusive.

I?m still a bit concerned about living so close to a substation with a child (I?m currently pregnant and would hope to have another one while living at this property), but not sure what to do, given that the research in this area is so sketchy.

Does anyone know more about this subject? For instance, how much radiation is a small electrical substation likely to emit? The flat is on the first floor, and the substation is less than 50 foot away from the building?

What would you do?

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

We live very close to a substation, has never really bothered me.
There are quite a few dotted around here.

I'd be quite happy to - but would worry about impact on selling property.

I am looking at buying a property, it is an old Pumping station which I want to convert into a house but it has a substation about 1 metre away from part of the building. I have some concerns too, i think the missions are not such a worry but being a power engineer I do know that there is a small risk that these things can blow up. So I want to know wether the utility company can move the substation somewhere else even if I have to pay for it, anyone know?

Yes I can spell, I just can't type! ;-)

We spoke to our electricity company about moving the substation at the front of our house (as the extra parking would be useful), and they said yes they would be willing to if we covered the cost, which would be about £15k and we would also have to provide an alternative piece of land. So in theory yes you can..

we do, and i panicked at first but don't give it a moment's thought now. in London, it's almost inevitable IMO.

Miss Tea/Cosette
I'm in a similar position - I'm about to purchase a property and have found out there's an electrical substation in the vicinity. 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 how you managed to get the electricity company round before exchanging contracts. Any advice/suggestions would be great.

these little neighbourhood substations are everywhere, you might not have noticed it but there will be one within a few streets of where you live.

Because of the way electromagnetic currents come from cables, there is no significant emission. If you think of the cables inside your house, where you have one red and one black inside the sheath, or one brown and one blue, the red (or brown) cable creates a clockwise emission at the same instant that the black (or blue) cable creates an anticlockwise emission. As they are next to each other, they cancel each other out. This is even more so with underground armoured cables, where the conductors are concentric and nothing can escape.

You only get a discernable emission if you have a single cable, not next to its partner, and preferably exposed to the air. So HV cables on the Grid do emit fields, but they are very high up and away from people. That is the only sort I would not want to live under. Industrial installations, with large three-phase circuits, have to take precautions against running a single conductor through a steel enclosure without its partners which cancel out the electro-magnetic flow. However it is not an issue in domestic installations.

Inside your house, the only cable that might emit anything you could detect without very expensive instruments, is the cable between your two-way light switches on the stairs, which may have two red conductors in it and no black. Since the current is very small, the emission is very slight. However it can sometimes cause flickering if you have energy-saving bulbs ("compact fluorescrent lamps") in both lampholders, especially if you have a house that was wired before the 1970's where they may be no effective earth conductor inside the lighting cable.

I especially love their fees page. Their Health Risk page, no so much as it doesn't include any evidence.

I wonder what prompted Anthony to link their advert website?

I have rejected two houses because of substations. The first one because the buzz would have driven me nuts in the garden, the second because it was ugly. Not bothered about health effects as I understood the risk to be virtually nil.

Could I ask which company did you ask to come over?

I am thinking about buying a house next to the substation.
I wanted to do some measurements but there seem to be nobody doing them. I live in Stockport.

Thanks,
anna

On this issue, all I want to say is that I am suspicious that there is a link because where I grew up there was a sub station at the top of our hill, two girls that I knew that lived within 200 yards of it developed a cancer of one kind and one died, both living in different houses with their familes. It struck me as a strange and very upsetting possible co-incidence don't you think. They were both living there throughout all of their childhood and both developed the cancers in their 20's. Very sad and worrying! I looked into it but could find hardly any information online about a possible link from a scientific perspective. But as a result I would never live near to any kind of sub station.

I've NRTWT but I can tell you that we looked at a house we were potentially interested in about 6 months ago, and discovered it had an sub station at the bottom of it's garden.

Despite the estate agent telling us he didn't think it was an issue , I decided it was enough to out me off and we walked away.

I think a combination of if it bothered me, it would bother someone else when coming to sell, and the not knowingness of it put me right off.

Interestingly the house went under offer v quickly after that but the sales have fallen through several times, so wonder if that could have been a reason?

hippy how many people living near substations don't develop cancer?

very sad, but this is anecdata. The e-fields in your house (assuming that you have electricity because you are using the internet) are of the same level.

Not sure if you'll get answers from the original posters - this thread is from 2009 !!

wouldn't touch it with a barge pole as would never forgive myself if the health risks had a detrimental effect on one of my family, especially as they aren't a secret.

Substation is connected directly to your house, and the signals are piped into every wall, floor and ceiling in your house. If you're sleeping near a socket or there are lights on the floor below, you're getting way more of whatever you're worried about then from a substation.
Substations look scary because they're not nicely plastered into your wall, but it's the same thing.
Treat it like living next to a grave yard. It doesn't look nice, and it might put people off, but you're getting a bigger health risk from air fresheners/driving/pollution/etc

Hi,

just to reassure you I'm a physicist by training and there is no proven issue with living near an electric substation. Some people claim to get headaches etc., but when tested by telling some of these people that they are being exposed to EM radiation when they aren't and telling others that they aren't being exposed to EM radiation when they are it has been shown that the headaches aren't due to the radiation, but the thought that something might be affecting them. There is also no proven link with cancer.

To put the levels of magnetic field that you're being exposed to into context, the Earth's natural magnetic field is between 25 and 65 micro Tesla, so really nothing to worry about.

We are a way through a purchase. We are in love, it will be our forever home- but there’s a substation the other side of the fence. It’s about 8-10m away.

I feel sick with worry.

I’ve lived near one for 42 years.
It’s about 20 metres away.
I have lots of crystals in my house, especially in the rooms opposite it.
Houses are bought and sold round here on a regular basis, don’t think anyone bats an eyelid.
I don’t have dect phones
I don’t have a microwVe
I won’t have a smart meter.
I’d rather live near the substation than under a pylon . That I wouldn’t do.

I have lots of crystals in my house, especially in the rooms opposite

What do these do?

Provide the pp with a placebo against something which doesn't exist but worries her I'd guess @HopeClearwater.

These threads irritate me because there is nothing to worry about other than substations can be ugly and, if they are on your property, there may be a wayleave agreement so the electricity supply company can carry out maintenance work.

Who dug up this zombie??

So much ignorant blubbering about e fields, all done on devices charged by electricity. In a country with free and compulsory education.