Any one tried living in a cave?

My mains is ok for now as I go strait into my mag amp but I am getting very freaked out about if my neighbors get smart meters.  Will these AC low pass filters be able to clean that out please?  Do 240v to 110V power tool transformers, the old heavy coil type, clean out dirt do you know? Would that be an option?                     I only use about 2kw a day total.  Do you know any way to get a clean non pulsed battery charger?  I am using my linear mag amp but only as I cannot find a clean battery charger.  
       I make wood and waste oil bath (100 lts) water heaters and have loads if any one needs one. Stainless steel in an oil drum.  I have my bath in the garden.  I had a rocket stove water heater for many years. I don't like the idea of water heated with electricity for some reason. No gas here.

well, you're not alone worrying about the plc-smartmeter-system.
https://www.geotellurique.fr/protection-electricite-sale-linky/714-filtre-cpl-biovolts-zen-protect-cenelec-a-a-d-protection-cpl-linky.html
it is unclear, at least at first sight, what is referred here to, common and/or  differential mode.
and the price is not inviting.
i rather follow Karl's solution and get one or a few of these cheap general industrial filters.
most of the emf-industry is after our hard earned cash, this bunch of  little quasi-alternative suckers.

"Do 240v to 110V power tool transformers, the old heavy coil type, clean out dirt do you know?"
No, they change the voltage, not the frequencies.
2 kwh per day is not that much, in the summer some solar panels in the garden could supply it.
I do not know about and can not compare linear mag amp-s but you'll find some old linear battery chargers or just simple larger 230v to 12-14v transformers at the scrapyard ( the linear chargers seem preferable as they regulate the voltage, although that could be tricky emf-wise , especially with newer models ).
These will not produce dirty electricty unlike a smps, but expect strong magnetic fields ( basically only at 50 Hz if the incoming current is clean ) within a few meter distance.
How far are your neighbours away ? if within 50 meter, get yourself another cave !

Plop Plop wrote

My mains is ok for now as I go strait into my mag amp but I am getting very freaked out about if my neighbors get smart meters.  Will these AC low pass filters be able to clean that out please?

Low pass filters should be pretty effective at blocking switching (pulsed) power supply noise, and somewhat effective at blocking radio. There's something called an AC feedthrough capacitor that might help for very high frequencies:

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Tusonix-CTS/4106-000LF/?qs=v1sh8PPj49gLf53BHqmEig%3d%3d
https://www.mouser.com/productdetail/schaffner/fn7510-10-m3?qs=fosVUi2b00xdvUJEgveooQ%3D%3D

They have to be installed through a grounded barrier between the mains and the load.

 

Do 240v to 110V power tool transformers, the old heavy coil type, clean out dirt do you know?

They will give you the same 50 Hz hum that you have on mains power. I've never tested how much higher-frequency noise gets through, but one engineer told me that the transformers on residential power lines in the U.S. do isolate to some degree.

Do you know any way to get a clean non pulsed battery charger?

I use these non-switching power supplies to charge batteries, but they're too small and designed for US mains power:

https://www.jameco.com/z/DFU120150-G9760-18-Watt-12-VDC-1-5-Amp-Regulated-Linear-Wall-Adapter_249244.html

I connect them in opposed pairs to reduce the 60 Hz magnetic stray fields, but you'd need three pairs to meet your daily power use (I'm assuming that you meant 2 kilowatt-hours.)

You might want to try a variac instead:

https://www.jameco.com/shop/StoreCatalogDrillDownView?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&freeText=variac&search_type=jamecoall

(Note that the ones above are from a US seller and designed for 110 or 220 volts. I don't know where to buy a 230V variac in the EU.)

They need a rectifier also:

https://www.jameco.com/shop/StoreCatalogDrillDownView?langId=-1&storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&freeText=bridge%20rectifier&search_type=jamecoall

These would be even better if they had a European distributor:

http://www.q-tran.com/products/power-supply/q6s-dc
http://www.q-tran.com/products/power-supply/q6m-dccap
http://www.q-tran.com/products/power-supply/qtm-dc

I have considerable dirt/clicking coming into my house mains power feed.  It may be from the wind turbines on my hill or somewhere. It get up to my linear mag amp but comes out as clean 12vDC no problem.  What freaks me out is my earth wire which goes from my bed to outside my window is picking it up. Its right at the bottom end of the AM dial of my radio.  I get severely effected my radio frequencies. They give me MS. I have used the AC Low Pass Filter or EMIs as I call them and they work but I have heard that they only change the frequencies though and don't stop that energy. Plus the ones I use are very cheap but only 10A so wont do all the house circuits legally. I need something between the meter and the board really.
    Because the old mag amp use 2 coils and don't seem to pass the dirt into the transformed output it makes me wonder if any one has found the big heavy coil yellow 240v to 110v transformers can clean the dirt out of electricity the same way? ( induction?) I shall have to drag one out and test it. So much stuff runs on 110 as well as 240 it might be useful some times.
     DC fridges are very bad for M field and motor dirt. AC is vastly better if you have to run them. Or any other motor. I never use DC motors if possible. Brushless being best.  

Plop Plop wrote

I have considerable dirt/clicking coming into my house mains power feed.

I have the same problem. Sometimes 'dirt' can come from poorly maintained power lines arcing. I don't know if this is true in Europe, but in the US it's sometimes possible to call the power company and get it fixed.

It get up to my linear mag amp but comes out as clean 12vDC no problem.

Once you convert it to DC, you can use a linear regulator to smooth out the output, so it might not matter as much what type of voltage converter you use. (On the other hand, the last regulated switching 12V adapter I bought was not as clean as the transformer-based ones I linked to earlier.)

What freaks me out is my earth wire which goes from my bed to outside my window is picking it up. Its right at the bottom end of the AM dial of my radio.  I get severely effected my radio frequencies. They give me MS.

I know one electrical engineer with ES and MCS who says the same thing. I definitely get numbness and poor coordination from EMI.

I have used the AC Low Pass Filter or EMIs as I call them and they work but I have heard that they only change the frequencies though and don't stop that energy.

It's hard to make a good AC low pass filter because you can't use large capacitors. (They sap too much power, and even if that were acceptable, big AC-rated capacitors are expensive.)

An LP filter doesn't really dissipate the energy unless it has resistors. The inductor is like a flywheel and the capacitors are like diaphragms. If there's a capacitor between hot and neutral on the mains side of the inductor, then small current fluctuations on hot should get shunted to neutral and back toward the pole. (It's basically a current-limited short circuit that provides an easier path for the pulses to follow than going through the inductor.) If there are capacitors running from both hot and neutral to ground, then noise traveling along both conductors should get shunted to ground. So it doesn't burn off the energy, but it keeps it off of the circuits in your house.

One thing to keep in mind is that most commercial low-pass filters are designed to keep dirty power out of sensitive appliances, not to keep appliances from polluting the circuits in your house. That doesn't matter when you're installing them at your meter, or on each of your circuits as it leaves the panel, but it might matter if you're using it by a noisy appliance. They might work better if the capacitors that go to ground are facing the offending appliance. Some multi-stage LP filters have them in the middle, in which case this is all moot.

As an aside, you might find this useful: https://product.tdk.com/info/en/products/emc/guidebook/index.html

The have a chapter on AC line filters, another one dealing with use of common mode chokes on data lines (helpful for cleaning up ethernet, phone and thermostat wiring), and an introductory chapter with a handy taxonomy of the different electronic components used to reduce noise.

I need something between the meter and the board really.

That would be the best place for it. I wish I could do that, but I don't own the building I live in.

Because the old mag amp use 2 coils and don't seem to pass the dirt into the transformed output it makes me wonder if any one has found the big heavy coil yellow 240v to 110v transformers can clean the dirt out of electricity the same way? ( induction?)

They have enough inductance to slow a 110/220V alternating current down to a trickle (when there's no counter-current in the driven coil), so they should be able to block smaller voltage ripples. I've thought about buying one of these to test that:

https://toroid.com/Products/General-Isolation-Transformers

They double as very effective surge blockers. Unfortunately, the big ones are expensive and they get fried if you draw too much current from them. They also emit a lot of stray magnetic flux. It sounds like you don't mind the 50 Hz field from your transformer, though.

I was concerned that there might be coupling between the driving (primary) coil and driven (secondary) coil. (https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/3009/isolation-transformers-capacitive-coupling)

Have you considered converting some of your circuits to 230V* DC with a bridge rectifier? It's easier to filter, and a lot of things will run fine on DC (soldering irons, halogen bulbs, some electronic light ballasts, lots of computer power supplies).

(*I thought that France was 230, but you keep mentioning 220; do I have it wrong?)

DC fridges are very bad for M field and motor dirt.

Since you mention this and the rocket stove, maybe you'd be interested in absorption chillers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

They can be made with no moving parts. I have some more detailed links if you'd like them.

AC is vastly better if you have to run them. Or any other motor. I never use DC motors if possible. Brushless being best.

There might be one exception: https://www.motioncontroltips.com/faq-servo-pancake-motors-work/

Since there are no spinning permanent magnets, no oscillating electro-magnets and very little armature inductance to drive arcing at the brushes, I've thought that they might be a good choice. Kollmorgen makes a few models for machine tools:

https://www.kollmorgen.com/en-us/products/motors/brush-dc/servo-disc/

They often show up on eBay. I will buy one eventually and test it.

Mon Dieux ,,, you know a lot of stuff.  Where do I start?   For tools I try to use air tools now because of the DC battery Mag thingy.  The clicking has gone down today in volume not frequency and so has the wind. It may be the new wind turbines.

You say "Once you convert it to DC, you can use a linear regulator to smooth out the output, so it might not matter as much what type of voltage converter you use. (On the other hand, the last regulated switching 12V adapter I bought was not as clean as the transformer-based ones I linked to earlier.)"  

 You are well beyond my knowledge.  The mag amps use induction rather than pulsed switching. The switching gives me hellish problems as each switch is a burst of radio shite.  I'm not sure now the mag amp cleans out the muck coming in but it does.   The other way is just to use a very long cable like 50m with lots of ferrites but even this is not so good and then an EMI and then use 240 or 220 or what ever. I have a real problem with radio waves coming out of wires.  Strangely to my mind shielded cables do not seem to stop this.  I use FP200 which has a tube of ali foil.
     I just bought a very big old LP filter on eBay today. Looks heavy. Might that work better? Its 15A. I am not convinced the Chinese thingies do that much as tested with my radio. They definitely do help though.  
     As I understand it you have quality standard for mains voltage in the US but in France they wont say they have. No standards for management are ever written down here for some unwritten down reason. It is very strange.
     You are right about the big 240 to 110v transformer making a mag field that could kill you.  They do really effect me.  The problem now for me is to find a clean load to put on it with a draw that wont create its own dirt??? Any clues?
     You know your fridges too.  I cut all my lecky at night. I have a gas fridge but cannot be bothered with it except at festivals for the beers. 1 bottle 13kg last 3 months though and keeps you warm. I cannot understand how they work though.
     Fridges only have the one moving part. The piston run by the motor. I found mine in a skip 30 years ago. They don't make em like that any more.
    Kollmorgen ServoDisc™ Brush DC Motors seem brill. Do they make bikes with them? I would be tempted to give one a try if they were clean.  Any other ways to buy them in things?
       

I'm impressed by how much you've figured out as well.

I've never seen a ServoDisc on a bike, but you could mount one in the main triangle of the frame and use a tandem crankset to run a chain on the left side down to the bottom bracket.

There's a British company making what I think is a similar design (http://lynchmotors.co.uk) and I've read on an engineering forum that NEC makes (or made) a similar motor. A guy in Michigan put two of the former in a Civic: http://www.evalbum.com/2224

Plop Plop wrote

I cut all my lecky at night. I have a gas fridge but cannot be bothered with it except at festivals for the beers. 1 bottle 13kg last 3 months though and keeps you warm.

Yeah, the propane is a nuisance. I was thinking about larger absorption chillers for household air conditioning (which I sometimes need on summer nights, although living underground might negate that). They can run on almost any heat source. Some of the marine versions will run on engine block heat.

The BEST thing about the cave is when it is TOO damn hot. I am ginger and don't handle heat at all well.   37C is too much for me and in the sun its often 60C here.  In the 2 hours for lunch time I go down into the cave  and it is so very very cool its like going into heaven.  Its free air conditioning. Hard to stay awake though.
        I use a bucket of water a lot to keep my milk cool when I'm in my truck.  I would use a solar panel running a fan but they are really dirty. I like the idea of the servo pancake motors. Are they really clean?  I must try to find more as the 12vDC motor problem leaves me connected to 220vAC. 12vDC is extremely bad compared to 240vAC for dirt.
       I am frightened of gas cos of the dangers. I have woken up to an empty bottle to many times. I am still surprised I am alive. My code of life is keep it simple and try to save the planet. And save my self from blowing up or burning down! I have seen to many fires over the years. I have been a candle maker for most of my life so have a healthy terror of fire.

Please have to tried the pancake motors with a very cheap unfiltered AM radio?  Do they make much muck?   I looked on eBay UK but they obviously have not learned to swim the Atlantic yet. I got 2 results from the UK.  For fans they would be brill. I must try to find some. They do seem hellish expensive and the postage from the US is horrendous.  Plus the French postmen  jump up and down on anything from the US.

I should be able to answer that soon. I just bought a U9M4F/OT yesterday for $70. One of the listings on eBay happened to be at a reputable surplus store just a few miles away from me, so I already have it.

I need to figure out where I put my ED88T and Radio Shack 12-467 AM radio, but then I'll have tests for you. What I can say so far is that I don't feel terrible when I stand next to it while it's running.

No luck finding specs for it, but it runs from 12V, and the other U9M4 motors all put out between 90 and 180W: http://www.vdwalle.com/Cutty%20Spark/u-series-servodisc-cat.pdf

I seemed like its only me who thinks FRI is important from fans. Laptops with disk drives are the things worst for EHS. Apparently 80% of people in the computer usage  industry have ES, ( I cant remember the name they give it) and it is the industry norm now.  Surly finding a fan and motor with no mag field and FRI should be a priority for manufacturers.

Update: It spins up very fast on 12V (maybe 1 krpm in a third of a second, judging by the sound). I don't have a suitable load to fit its shaft (0.305"), so for the moment I've only run it for fractions of a second at a time at that voltage.

It runs nicely from a 9V battery (maybe a few hundred rpm and steady).

It didn't spin up at all on 5V, but that may have to do with the buck converter in the 12V->5V adapter I used. (I don't have any high-amperage 5V power supplies.)

I found my Radio Shack 12-467 and ran some tests. The summary is that it's not as quiet in RF as I'd hoped, but still quieter on the radio than my 60 Hz AC wiring (which was 5' farther away) and with no audible low frequency noise.

The first test was done in the open without turning any background emitters off (beyond what I do at baseline, which includes leaving a few circuits off, limiting SMPS use to a few built-in appliances that I can't get rid of, filtering them and all other power supplies and shielding them with both aluminum and ferromagnetic materials). As I said, under those conditions it was no worse than the background noise level.

The second test was done inside a grounded aluminum RF shield, with my ethernet network and all nearby lights and powered equipment turned off. Under those conditions the RF noise was much louder than baseline. Most of it seems to come from the back of the motor, so the next step will be to remove the cover and see what's underneath.

I also compared it to a new 350W Ampflow DC brush motor. The Ampflow motor has a more irregular and low-pitched noise that's punctuated by pulsating from the motor poles. It's about as loud on the radio.

The Kollmorgen motor I bought is pretty old and looks it, so it might be better if I replaced the brushes.

I'll run some tests with my ED88T once I find it, and hopefully with a more accurate gauss meter when I decide what to buy.

I was able to block almost all of the RFI by enclosing the motor in a single layer of aluminum bug screen. Good grounding seems to improve it, as does having at least a 1 cm gap between the motor housing and the screen.

So if you just want to run a blower or cooling fan and you're willing to put a bank of batteries in the shield with it, then it would work well. A DC line filter would probably allow running it from an outside power source, but I haven't tested that yet.

My radio usually picks up ELF noise (like 60 Hz from a magnetic transformer or AC stray fields from motors), but it didn't detect any from this one. I'm happy about that :)

I read that pancake motors are sparkless so where do the radio frequency bursts come from?  I would be interested in a review with a brushless of similar power. I cannot find one on google.  I desperately want a fan for the French summer heat but don't dare use an ordinary fan inside my Faraday truck.

Plop Plop wrote

I read that pancake motors are sparkless so where do the radio frequency bursts come from?

This is all pretty new to me, so my only guess for now is that it's due to worn brushes. The resistance across the terminals is twice what it's supposed to be. I've read that the resistance in carbon brushes is usually higher than in short lengths of copper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransformer#Variable_autotransformers), and resistance also increases as the cross section of a conductor decreases; so if the brush bristles are only making sporadic contact, they could build up a charge that's higher than the charge in the armature and release it as an arc or pulse as they start to come back in contact.

Right now I'm happy with the U9M4F/OT. My plan is to use it to drive a blower in an air filter, so I'd want to have a safety screen on it anyway. It's not much more bother to make that out of aluminum and ground it.

I did order a U9DT-D (platinum coated version of the ServoDisc U9M4HT) to see if that's any better, but I'll probably use both of them either way.

If you want a cheaper way to experiment, you could buy an old VHS player or rewinder; they supposedly used small printed armature motors to drive the tape spools.

I would be interested in a review with a brushless of similar power. I cannot find one on google.

It's hard to do a good comparison with the 12-467 radio because really high magnetic fields make it go silent. I can never get a good reading of RFI when I hold it near transformers or inductive chargers, and it seemed to be doing the same thing when I put it next to the Apmflow motor. I'll have to measure the line noise directly with an oscilloscope.

If RFI is the only thing that bothers you, you could use almost any DC motor with a good line filter and a conductive shield. If the magnetic fields from the iron-core windings bother you more, then I think the pancake motors are probably better. (You could also try shielding a brushless motor with electrical steel or Mu-Metal.)

I received the other motor yesterday, and it produces roughly the same noise.

The next step will be to get a decent measurement of low-frequency magnetic fields, and after that I'll take at least one of them apart to look at the brushes.

Magnetic fields die off extremely fast. Inverse cubed law I think. Its only relevant to laptops where you are way too close to the fan motor and hard drive (They are the worst).  Most DC things you would not notice except in a vehicle. They are killer then. Modern vehicles are a death trap for every  body as we all have iron based blood that clogs and wont move.  
     Computer cooling fans are RF dirty as hell. Plus it goes down the wires into your keyboard and mouse. Its better not to make it as it is hard to block, either with chokes or ali foil.
    I expect you know all this but its for others.  I appreciate your help. I am very interested.  I cannot believe how sensitive I am to AM radio waves. Have you ever found any thing about this? There is nothing on the internet ever.

Its build a new Hobbit house. Wet soil is brill for stopping EMR RWs.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149789570@N05/