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Ohio Supreme Court Drawn Into Magnetic Homes Case

The Ohio Supreme Court will decide if a builder will have to replace magnetized parts of two couples' homes, even though they signed a limited warranty which did not specifically cover replacing positively- or negatively-charged building materials. After moving into the homes the couples found that something was not quite right. Their TV screens were distorted. Cordless phones ran into interference. Computer hard drives were corrupted. Soon after, it was discovered that steel joists in the homes had become magnetized."

2 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I have to wonder... by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, something definitely seems fishy here. You have to have a really strong magnetic field to affect a hard drive from any distance. Are steel objects flying out of their hands and sticking to the corners of the room? And yes, magnetic fields should have zero effect on electronic equipment, unless it's moving (which creates an electric field). If the house is like those rotating restaurants, except much faster, and is spinning around a stationary phone, I can see how that would cause a problem...

  2. Re:Why replace? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The summary reads like BS anyway.
    If they actually have magnetic mono-poles in their house they should sell them for millions of dollars, instead of complaining about it.
    No one describes a magnet as "positively charged".
    Also charge is an entirely different property than magnetism.
    It seems far more likely the beams are not properly grounded and are possibly acting like an antenna, causing all kinds of interference.
    And unless they mounted their hard drives onto the "magnetic" beams I seriously doubt the field is strong enough to affect them.

    Finally I have to wonder how would these beams get magnetized?
    Did the electrician wrap some power cables around it?