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High-Voltage Fences For Zapping Would-Be Copper Thieves
coondoggie writes "It may be a gimmick or the ultimate answer, but a California city this week okay-ed a draft ordinance that would let businesses install 7,000-volt electric fences to protect sites from rampant copper thieves. As reported by the Sacramento CBS station, the reaction from one business owner to the ordinance says it all: 'It'll be a little fun to watch one of these guys get electrocuted holding my fence trying to rob me.'"
Coming soon: "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence" championship edition.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Start making the recyclers who pay cash for copper keep records and start prosecuting them for receiving stolen goods.
It'll be a lot of fun to see the guy's face when they steal his electric fence wire.
John
But this isn't a booby trap.
The fences have to be properly signed, and are only allowed in industrial zoned areas.
Frankly, I think it's a bit overkill, but I totally understand. A local yard was robbed of commercial sized spools of copper wire, had to cost a ton. Even worse, thieves have been opening the access panel on street lights and using their cars to pull the wire out.
Rancho Cordova (where this passed) has long been seen as a higher crime area, not surprised they're going to these lengths at all.
-nbr
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'It'll be a little fun to watch one of these guys get electrocuted holding my fence trying to rob me.'"
Until the the thief turns around and tries to sue you and most likely wins.
Because he didn't know how to read the signs "copper thieves will be electrocuted; survivors will be electrocuted again"?
Privacy is terrorism.
I'm not a licensed electrician, but 7,000 volts sounds kinda' deadly.
Not really, as they say "current kills", not voltage. Static electric discharges frequently have a higher voltage than that. Lethality depends on a number of different factors. Of course, 7,000 volts of continuous DC current would most certainly be enough to kill most people, but electric fences usually use short pulses rather than continuous flow (at least, animal fences I've worked with, and been shocked by, do).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Where I live that is one of many regulations related metal recycling. It hasn't worked. There is no way to identify a particular piece of pipe, wiring etc. and say it came from some specific location. Even where you COULD match it up, that would require forensic inspection of every piece of metal trash, then comparing each to all thefts. We're talking about vast amounts of scrap, trash, every day, not the occasional mysterious body evey few years, so the forensics to match them aren't anywhere near feasible.
A neighbor girl had fun teaching my dogs to jump my fence. She was climbing back and forth into my yard all the time and goading the dogs to follow her. They of course learned. So I went to the local farm implement store and was looking at invisible fences... they were expensive... then I saw the regular farm electric fence transformer was only $15! SOLD! A roll of aluminum wire was $5 for 1/4 mile and the insulators was another $2. So for $22 and about 2hrs work I had an electric fence.
Well my neighbors were "outraged" The little girl that had been jumping the fence was now in "mortal danger" according to her mom. I told her "well maybe you should keep her off my fence then" The fact of the matter is, I got zapped by far worse fences than what I put up when I was a kid... and while it smarts, it doesn't do any real damage to you. Apparently there's a city ordinance against electric fences in town, they pointed this out to me... I pointed out that I really didn't care and I was already breaking at least a dozen others. They called the cops... cops never came. Apparently had more important things to do.
Then, about 8 months later, the best thing ever happened (well for me anyway.) The neighbors got their house broken into. I guess it wasn't great for them. But the cops showed up, investigated, and told them there were tracks in the mud leading up to MY fence... then for some odd reason the moved over to their house, jumped the fence and kicked in the back door. The husband told me about this... wanted his own electric fence now. He said "When you stop laughing can you go with me to the store?"
Long story short... electric fences rock. 2 of my neighbors have them to.
BTW, if you ever need to determine if your electric fence is switched on or not, without putting your tongue across it, a portable AM radio tuned between stations and held close to the wires will enable the HV pulses to be heard.
How about instead of spending billions on replacing stolen goods and electric fences and insurance we instead spend millions giving away free crack, heroin and other addictive drugs? You get a card and you can go to a drug store and get free heroin. We'd save a LOT of dollars.
Yeah, people keep saying that, but its not true. Have a read of ohms law. E=I*R and P=E*I (e=voltage, i=current, r=resistance, p=power) If you want to put 50ma through a person who has 2ko of body resistance, you need 100V. That'll pull 5 watts from the fence. If your electric fence is 10kv but can only deliver 1 watt, the voltage will drop to 45V and the current will be 22ma with a 2k load.
You're pretty safe with anything less than 30ma. Most RCD safety devices wont trip until there is a 30ma leak.
I once touched an electric fence with a three foot stick. I got quite a jolt. It's current, amps, that are dangerous, but it's volts that jump through insulation, and these things have a lot of volts. If you're unsure whether gloves, say thick leather work gloves, will help, consider this - an electric fence is designed to drop a 2,000 bull. A bull covered in non-conductive hair, and under that, covered in leather. Hmm, I'm giving advice for THIEVES. Come to think of it, everything I just said is a lie. All you have to do is use your T shirt to cover the wire, so your hands don't touch it directly. It'll work, I promise.
> I'm not a licensed electrician...
This is clear.
> ...but 7,000 volts sounds kinda' deadly.
Electric fence chargers such as the one I use to keep my horses in put out short high-voltage pulses with an energy per pulse of about 6 Joules. The peak voltage is 5,000 to 10,000 volts. The shock is quite painful but not deadly. It leaves no mark and does no damage. I know this from direct experience.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Having worked in the recycling industry for years, solving the "sales" side of this is easy.
A posted and implemented policy of paying by check if the payout is greater than $20 makes most of these problems go away.
This works because large volumes comes in trucks and legitimate businesses generally prefer to receive a check (prevents employee skimming).
After that, invest in a few video cameras, particularly one trained at the parking lot exit (to pick up rear license plates). Attach these to a motion-detecting video recorder and make sure you know how to burn DVDs. The few times we have had to involve law enforcement, they were pretty happy with a plate number and footage including a face and "the goods".
So far, we have never had the check cashed, but if we did, the cops would then have a tie to the criminal's financial institution and we would join their case with a counter-suit to get our money back.
Keep in mind that we really do not want to make an illegal buck, but at the same time, we also want to earn the legal bucks as efficiently as possible.
If businesses are people, then why aren't they put in jail when they break laws? Why aren't they required to pay income taxes, social security, serve in the army if there is a draft,.......
Businesses may EMPLOY people, and they can be OWNED by people. But they are certainly not people themselves.
There was an area in Russia where thieves cut down a high-tension wire. They shot a steel cable over the line, shorting it out and causing the breakers to pop. They then cut out a HUGE section before it could reset. They got nearly 2 miles of cable.
The local power company replaced the cables. They finish working at the other end, and give the okay to turn on the power. Two miles downrange, see a huge flash, then they hear *BOOM!* The power goes offline again, and the repair team goes back to where the first cut was made.
They find a grass fire. After putting it out, they find that the cable had been cut again, and was in the process of being coiled up by the thief.
The thief had been standing in the middle of the coil when the power was turned on.
All they found was a pair of boots, with feet inside them. Everything else had been vaporized.
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