How dangerous is it to use a multimeter to measure voltage in sockets

Pussyhands

Saw a video of a lad checking the voltage in a house socket.

Is it dangerous? Will you get killed if you were shocked? What kind of current would be drawn?

Then I was googling and it said to be safe, you should hold the two probes in the one hand...to me that makes it even more likely you'd touch together.

How risky would you say it is to use a typical multimeter on live systems with that kind of voltage.

aido79

Pussyhands wrote: »

Saw a video of a lad checking the voltage in a house socket.

Is it dangerous? Will you get killed if you were shocked? What kind of current would be drawn?

Then I was googling and it said to be safe, you should hold the two probes in the one hand...to me that makes it even more likely you'd touch together.

How risky would you say it is to use a typical multimeter on live systems with that kind of voltage.

As long as the person checking the voltage is using a good quality multimeter and knows what they're doing it's very safe. The leads are plastic with only the tip touching the live terminals. The current drawn would be very small because the internal resistance of the multimeter is very high. The resistance is in megaohms(very high) so the current would be mircoamps(very low).

whizbang

Have you ever heard that a good electrician has one hand in his pocket.

The point of using one hand is that if you touch a live circuit, the current won't flow across the heart to the other hand, instead down through less sensitive parts of the body, where you might even be insulated by shoes etc.

0lddog

Pussyhands wrote: »

Saw a video of a lad checking the voltage in a house socket.

Is it dangerous? Will you get killed if you were shocked? What kind of current would be drawn?

Then I was googling and it said to be safe, you should hold the two probes in the one hand...to me that makes it even more likely you'd touch together.

How risky would you say it is to use a typical multimeter on live systems with that kind of voltage.

If you need to ask then you shouldnt do it

Pussyhands

0lddog wrote: »

If you need to ask then you shouldnt do it

Never said I was interested in doing it.

Pussyhands

whizbang wrote: »

Have you ever heard that a good electrician has one hand in his pocket.

The point of using one hand is that if you touch a live circuit, the current won't flow across the heart to the other hand, instead down through less sensitive parts of the body, where you might even be insulated by shoes etc.

Never heard of that until now :-)

Cerveza

Google is a bad lad. Do you want to know the voltage at your house op?

Sleeper12

whizbang wrote:

Have you ever heard that a good electrician has one hand in his pocket.

I thought it was one hand in the customers pocket.

Kidding

Pussyhands

Cerveza wrote: »

Google is a bad lad. Do you want to know the voltage at your house op?

No I was just curious as my dad was checking if power was going to a certain part of a microwave with a mains tester and then I was wondering what all the settings do on a multimeter and then I came across a youtube video of a lad testing the voltage in a socket of a house.

I like to have a bit of theory knowledge even if I am never going to use it.