Ohio Supreme Court Drawn Into Magnetic Homes Case 462
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."
Re:I have to wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
but the casing of (all?) commercial HDDs is designed to attenuate magnetic fields. this is because there is a great big honking rare earth magnet built right into the drive, just inches away from the platter. It is used to drive the voice coil actuator that moves the head around. Having that just a few inches away from floppy diskette drives (now a rarity, but still) without such attenuation would have been "Bad, M'kay."
to not only have sufficient magnetic flux at the platter surface, but also be sufficient to cause electrical eddies inside the platters due to the rotation, the walls would have to be several million tesla in magnetic potential.
Flying forks and hallucenations would be occuring long before this would become a problem.
Re:I have to wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, so what? A hard drive is magnetically and EMI shielded, for one thing (it's encased in metal), but we're talking about a house's structural members interfering with a phone, not a hard drive interfering with a phone. Probably everyone here has both a hard drive (or several), and a phone (or several); anyone experiencing interference between the two? The house owners are complaining of the house itself causing problems with their hard drives and their phones, not of their hard drives interfering with their phones.
Finally, hard drive platters, while coated with a magnetic substance, don't have much overall magnetism by themselves. Take one apart, take the platter out, and see if you can get it to stick to anything steel; it won't. The great source of magnetism in the HD is from the read-write head, which actually doesn't move very much (it just moves back and forth in a small arc), and also from some rather strong permanent magnets that are affixed to the HD chassis (used in the arm mechanism), and which don't move at all.
Bullshit supreme (Score:4, Informative)
The people who claim they are affected are just mixing things that, to their uneducated minds, are the same thing. Static magneticity, radio waves, same difference, right?
It reads like a bunch of BS. Do they still have CRTs in their TVs? In typical 2-story U.S. homes, there's structural steel in a few isolated places -- a beam or two in the basement, perhaps another beam and a column in the garage. That would, at best, cause some changes in color. It'd need to be substantial to cause geometric distortion of the image itself. You can have typical home speakers a few feet away from a color CRT and there's no effect. That structural steel would need to be magnetized quite well to see the effects they claim.
Hard drives won't be affected by any remnant magnetization of structural steel that's a byproduct of production, shipping and storage in varied conditions. Same goes for wireless devices -- static fields do nothing much to them. I'll read their case and perhaps pay them a visit, I need to see it to believe it.
It's about "right to sue", not about damages (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot summary does not agree with the original article, which says the Supreme Court will only decide whether the couple has the right to sue (a matter of law). Only later might the question move to whether magnetized joists have caused any trouble, a matter of fact.
Re:Chose builder that gives you the lowest quote.. (Score:2, Informative)
most dishwashers mount by 2 wood screws.
Re:Why replace? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why replace? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's about "right to sue", not about damages (Score:3, Informative)
Centex's argument is that whether it's their fault or not, it's not covered under the Home Warranty so they can't be held liable even if it was their fault and thus the Jones' can't sue them over it. The Jones' are arguing that they have the right to sue based on "Workmanlike manner" clauses in the law and that those clauses can't be waived.
The only issue in this case is whether the "Workmanlike manner" clauses can be waived by contract. The issue of the floor joists and Centrex's liability would be determined in a separate case if the Supreme Court rules that the "Workmanlike manner" clauses can not be waived.
Re:Why replace? (Score:4, Informative)
A static magnetic field has nothing to do with a 900 MHZ or whatever radio signal coming from the phone.
But it would take a very strong field to cause this. The phone would jump out of your hand and stick to the wall first.
Re:Why replace? (Score:3, Informative)
Because they are filing a lawsuit claiming that the magnetized steel beams are affecting their hard disks. "Ninjas snuck into my house and erased them" would at least be statistically possible.
The only effect a magnetized steel beam could have on a hard disk is if were used to crush it.
Re:Why replace? (Score:4, Informative)
Flat sheet steel does little to curb static magnetic fields.
Experiment: Find a CRT, and a magnet. Observe how they behave together. Next, put something steel (the side from a PC case?) between the two, and observer that they behave almost the same... Feel free to repeat with iron filings, aluminum and steel cans, old license plates, or whatever. It shields somewhat, and does a bit of scattering, but it's lousy (and certainly not "very good").
One can use an appropriately curved chunk of curved steel to accomplish some shielding. See, for instance, shielded speakers [google.com], which use a cup to completely surround the magnet, sometimes in addition to a second magnet which is only used to help counteract the external field of the first.
But, you know, your PC case isn't shaped like that.
There are certain high-permeability materials (Mu-metal being one) which do far better, but they're pretty far removed from the common mild steel of a PC. (I haven't verified this, but I've read that Mu-metal is used on the back side of the neodymium magnets inside of a hard drive, and if that is the case it would easily explain how one side sticks ferociously to the side of the fridge, and the other side won't even pick up a paper clip.)