V9027XA Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, initial encounter V9027XD Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, subsequent encounter V9027XS Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, sequela
The main breaker in a house is usually 100 (older) or 200 (newer) amps. Individual breakers are around 15-20. A single appliance drawing 8 amps is nothing unusual. In fact, your average hair drier pulls more current than that. So it's not that unreasonably.
First, when I was traveling in Peru they had "electric showers". Instead of a conventional water heater and tank the water was heated at "the last mile", right in the shower head (yes I stayed at cheap hotels!). Of course they never quite worked right so you had to stick your fingers around and try to get them going. Anyways, I was playing around with the damm thing when the pipe ripped out of the wall (there was weak joint at the wall). I instinctively grabbed the pipe and got a wopping shock. I had wet feet, wet hands and was butt naked. The shower head had nice fat 240V lines comming in. Anyways, as you can tell, I survived. I certainly got a good shaking though! I imagine that I'm not the first person who gets electrocuted by these things. So, to conclude, I think a 240V line is not (always) deadly, even when wet.
The thing to understand is that the power coming into your house or coming out of a battery is not a perfect voltage source. It will not give you the same voltage regardless of current. It is also not a perfect current source (it doesn't provide a constant current regardless of resistance). It's somewhere in between. It can be modeled as a perfect voltage source in series with a resistor. If you start drawing lots of current the effective voltage drops. Therefore current does not vary linearly with the inverse of resistance of the "useful load" (you).
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V9027XA Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, initial encounter
V9027XD Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, subsequent encounter
V9027XS Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, sequela
The main breaker in a house is usually 100 (older) or 200 (newer) amps. Individual breakers are around 15-20. A single appliance drawing 8 amps is nothing unusual. In fact, your average hair drier pulls more current than that. So it's not that unreasonably.
A couple things :
First, when I was traveling in Peru they had "electric showers". Instead of a conventional water heater and tank the water was heated at "the last mile", right in the shower head (yes I stayed at cheap hotels!). Of course they never quite worked right so you had to stick your fingers around and try to get them going. Anyways, I was playing around with the damm thing when the pipe ripped out of the wall (there was weak joint at the wall). I instinctively grabbed the pipe and got a wopping shock. I had wet feet, wet hands and was butt naked. The shower head had nice fat 240V lines comming in. Anyways, as you can tell, I survived. I certainly got a good shaking though! I imagine that I'm not the first person who gets electrocuted by these things. So, to conclude, I think a 240V line is not (always) deadly, even when wet.
The thing to understand is that the power coming into your house or coming out of a battery is not a perfect voltage source. It will not give you the same voltage regardless of current. It is also not a perfect current source (it doesn't provide a constant current regardless of resistance). It's somewhere in between. It can be modeled as a perfect voltage source in series with a resistor. If you start drawing lots of current the effective voltage drops. Therefore current does not vary linearly with the inverse of resistance of the "useful load" (you).