Well these zaps are happening when I touch pretty much anything metal like the door frames and what not so I really don't think it's an electrical issue. Just very very staticy. I think all that laminate dust is absorbing what little moisture was left in the air. Seems to be a little less severe now that I've wiped a bunch of it of the floors and walls. However I've probably only hit about 30% of the place at this point. Gotta stop today because moving all my crap around yet again is really toasting my back.

Super pissed about that but maybe it'll give me some leverage on the big stuff I want done around here. 

Oh and when that really bad one happened I was handling some blankets that get staticy in the best of conditions so it was like a double whammy. Cheers.

Well I figured out what's causing the static. It's the laminate flooring. They must have cheaped out on the underlay. I see some kind of anti static treatment for laminate being referred to elsewhere on the tubes (gearslutz was one funnily enough... even though I never really look at that site). I'll have to find some of that and get a humidifier and hope for the best.

 Those baseboard electric heaters do a really good job of drying out the air and the surrounding objects. When the air is dry things tend to become more prone to static electricity. If you come in there wearing rubber soled shoes rubbing them on the floor it charges you like a big capacitor. Carpet is notorious for collecting charges. I'm guessing that Laminate flooring collects it too.

 I had a spark  jump off a microphone onto my nose one time after I had walked 30ft wearing a pair of big rubber sole sneakers. I don't know how much voltage I accumulated but it was enough to send a lightening stalk 2" into my nose. I had a little red circle on my nose for awhile, made a little popping sound. I thought maybe I had experienced the holy ghost for a minute there ;-) The slow motion photography would have been interesting to watch with me wailing in one of those deep low kung foo voices right before the punch.

 I'm sure glad toilets or loos aren't made of metal.

hmm... maybe I'll have to stop wearing my rubber soled slippers. However the floors that didn't get redone are nasty. Gonna have to get them to fix that. Not happy they left them in that condition.

I thought rubber soles would have the opposite effect on static electricity.

Here's a tip I learned because I hate the same thing:  Keep one of those dryer sheets (like Bounce Free) with you and rub yourself or other things down.  I like to wear fleece coats and, when I take them off, I'm ripe to get zapped so I just do a quick wipe down with a sheet I keep in my pocket and... no zaps!

hmm... Maybe I could attach one to a Swiffer thingy and wipe the floors with it. Wonder if that would help.

The charge that builds up is just like lightning..... caused by the friction of two objects passing each other. It just has a much lower voltage potential in your room.... it's still capable of a few hundred to over a  thousand volts.... but with very low current. 

In my case it's cotton jeans sliding across a polyester chair's seat cushion.... it drags enough electrons loose to make a > 1/4" or so spark on the other end.  Still, that's a several hundred if not a thousand volts or more,  rushing to ground through my equipment. If the gear is on, when this occurs, you will hear the "pop" in the speakers.... that indicates it got into the audio path..... 

Just touch something grounded. 

Or, it is really bothersome.... do what they do in many labs..... go to an electronics store and buy a grounding strap and put it on before to start working.  It is a bracelet kind of a thing with a wire attached to a clip. The clip attaches to a grounded item.... could be with a screw or with an alligator type clip. It is constantly discharging the static build up in your body to ground. If you have the kind of chair I do, it might be worth investing in one of those things.... a few dollars at most. 

Remember when pretty much all computer parts came with an anti static bracelet? I did not get a single one with any of the parts for my DAW. Now they just tell you to touch an outlet every so often while you're building. Very annoying.

Didn't some of those bracelets come without a grounding wire though? A friend of mine got one when he bought parts for his computer. It was just a bracelet with no wire. I always wondered how in the hell it was supposed to work.