!%^%^@&^!!!!!&(*^!@!!!!!!!!!

OK, now that I got that out of the way let me explain. In the last few weeks the lights all over my house have started flickering occasionally. Great, this is all I need as I try and finish up the HT. Not only is this a concern in and of itself, but I want to get it resolved before I start hooking up HT equipment. This is almost as good as the letter I received Friday from the IRS saying we didn't report some income on our 2005 taxes and we owe them almost $9000. We are pretty sure it's an error, it looks like they think that the entire value of some mutual funds we own was income which it wasn't. They are funds we've owned for years and we always report the gains as capitol gains, but this tax seems to be on the entire value of the funds. Anyway, I'll rant about that elsewhere.

Here are some data points about this flickering problem:

- We have made no electrical changes preceeding the problem showing up.

- It happens all over the house on multiple circuits. We've seen ceiling lights as well as lamps plugged into outlets flicker. We've also noticed a bathroom fan and our microwave dipping in power at the same time the lights flicker.

- We have never had problems with this until the last few weeks. There is an overhead light fixture in my office that has flickered for a long time (when other lights did not), so the first thing I am going to do is replace it. Turning off the circuit that goes to the office light didn't make the problem go away. But could one light on one circuit cause problems on many other circuits?

- Last July we had an electrician replace our main 100A panel with a 200A panel and add a 100A sub-panel for the HT. Shutting off the breaker to the sub-panel does not make the problem go away. We have had no electrical problems until recently. The electrician's work passed inspection.

- We can't so far narrow it down to flickering when one particuar appliance is running. However, there have been times when we use the microwave that the lights do dim. Unplugging the microware doesn't make the problem go away.

- We had the utilities company check out their lines and they tightened a few connections but didn't think that was the cause. It still happens after that. They said if it continued after the tightening, they would put a monitor on our line to determine if the problem is inside or outside our house. I will call them Monday.

- When the utilities company was here the guy said my feed was "spliced" with my next door neighbors feed. He was that wasn't a good thing, but didn't think that was causing the problem. Any idea what this means? That neighbor is not seeing flickering.

- None of our neighbors I've talked to are having this problem

- We have never had a breaker throw, so I don't think a single appliance or circuit is drawing excessive amounts of current

- Our house is not that big and doesn't have anything that would use lots of electricity such as electric heat. I suspect 200A is way overkill for this size house, but I decided to upgrade it just to make sure we would always have enough power.

- It comes and goes, and has been most noticable the two times we have had rain or snow. I wouldn't say this is 100% conclusive since it's been a short time but I am suspicious of water getting into the lines and creating a temporary short before it's burned away. It's now two warm days after snow and it's still happening, but the ground could still be wet even though the snow has melted.

- We had the electrician run a 40A circuit for AC back in July, but the AC unit was just installed within the last month. The electrician ran the electrical outside to a box and put the whip (is that the correct term?) on that needed to be hooked to the AC. The AC guy just hooked up this whip to the AC within the last month. The breaker for the AC is currently turned off because the AC guy has to wait for a warm day before he can turn on the AC and prime the lines or something like that. Could this AC cause the problem even if the breaker is turned off?

It seems to me that since it's all over the house, it must be something in the main panel or in our feed. We rented a beach house in Hawaii once and the exact same flickering happened. It turned out that a transformer that fed the house was going bad so they were not getting sufficient power fed to the house. It seems like it must be either that our house is not getting fed enough power, or maybe there is a problem with the ground and neutral such that the reference voltage potential is not really 0 volts. Perhaps a bad connection to ground?

I'm an electrical engineer and used to be an apprentice eletrician, so throw out any potental causes and hopefully I'll be able to understand them. If I can't figure it out and the utilities company says the problem is inside my house I'll bring my electrician back in but now is a terrible time since I'm already broke from the HT build.

Thanks,
Guy

How does the electricity come to the meter ( above ground or underground?)

Maybe there is a bad wire that acts up when you have rain or snow and gets wet.

If your electricity comes in from overhead do the lights also flicker if it is windy out?

Hope you find out what the problem is.

Eric

How does the electricity come to the meter ( above ground or underground?)

Maybe there is a bad wire that acts up when you have rain or snow and gets wet.

If your electricity comes in from overhead do the lights also flicker if it is windy out?

Hope you find out what the problem is.

Eric

Our electricity enters the house underground.

Thanks,
Guy

It sounds like a power company thing to me, even if your neighbors have not mentioned it.

It sounds like a power company thing to me, even if your neighbors have not mentioned it.

Ask the neighbors to be sure - but it sounds like a loose lug in either your panel or within the meter assembly.

And it would be a loose neutral lug if any...... although they should check them all to be sure.

I say loose neutral because what happens is effecting both legs - and the neutral is the only common tie between the 2.

You'ds be amazed how many times I've seen electricians torque the lugs for the mains entering the panel only to have them loosen up after the panel has operated for a period of time.

When power is drawn through the mains they heat up quite a bit - and the expansion contraction can cause them to work loose.

SoI say "bring back your electrician and have him bring his torque wrench".........

Rod

We had a similar issue, but it was mostly due to any appliances cutting on. I sort of ignored it for a year. The city was widening our road a few months back and had to move a power line. Apparently a tree had grown into our line and we were getting a suboptimal amount of power. No flickering since. Not sure this helps at all, except to say that problems with the line outside or local transformers can create a similar situation to what you have described.

- We had the electrician run a 40A circuit for AC back in July, but the AC unit was just installed within the last month.

How about a bad AC unit? That's when the main problem started occuring. Maybe a bad compressor motor or blower motor? When an AC unit turns on, it draws a lot of juice and can make the lights dim. If yours keeps flickering, then maybe one half of the motor is not working so it keeps drawing that startup amperage to get the compressor to turn. It's like the motor turning on and off repeatedly. Try turning off the breaker to both the outside compressor and the inside blower and see if the flicker continues.

How about a bad AC unit? That's when the main problem started occuring. Maybe a bad compressor motor or blower motor? When an AC unit turns on, it draws a lot of juice and can make the lights dim. If yours keeps flickering, then maybe one half of the motor is not working so it keeps drawing that startup amperage to get the compressor to turn. It's like the motor turning on and off repeatedly. Try turning off the breaker to both the outside compressor and the inside blower and see if the flicker continues.

That would be a likely candidate, but the AC has not been turned on yet. The breaker feeding the AC is off. The AC guy said that he would need to come back and start up the AC when it was warmer out, so it's never been fired up.

Guy

I had a flickering light problem at my house. It was generally related to load, but not any particular load and not necessarily high load. The electrician looked at the main panel and found out that (1) we have common neutrals (a technique used in some housing construction) and (2) one of the circuits was soldered to the main panel. The soldering was the problem, but if I understand correctly, the common neutrals contributed to making it difficult to track the problem down because multiple circuits ran through the soldered neutral at the main panel. The solder introduced resistance and caused my flickering. Hooked the soldered line up to another location on the breaker and the problem went away.

Has an electrician taken a real close look at your panel yet?

Call an electrician to check the two (2) phase A and B connections from where the lugs are fed from your meter and where your lugs feed your main breaker, something is probably loose somewhere. The hot and nuetral wires from the main breaker to the bus bar/nuetral bar should be tightened with a torque wrench. Any electrician can figure out which one is loose with a voltmeter.

Call an electrician to check the two (2) phase A and B connections from where the lugs are fed from your meter and where your lugs feed your main breaker, something is probably loose somewhere. The hot and nuetral wires from the main breaker to the bus bar/nuetral bar should be tightened with a torque wrench. Any electrician can figure out which one is loose with a voltmeter.

Yep, this happened to me recently. Lights were flickering randomly and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Called an electrician and he checked the main breaker. In my case the bracket for the screw was broken, but the electrician said often it's just one of the screws will be loose.

That happened to us last summer, the breaker never tripped, but the lights and computer on two separate circuits dimmed on a random basis. The computer was on an APC and the voltage would drop for several seconds. I tried everything to isolate the problem, but couldn't figure it out. Turned out the insulation in one of the wires had worn away (within the BX). The electrician said he's never seen it before and the wire must have been defective. He showed me the burned/smoldering wires he removed. He said I was lucky I didn't have a fire.

My in-laws in somewhat rural Wisconsin had a similar incident. They fry answering machines and phones all the time with lines going down in winter storms. Two summers ago they were having brownouts. Luckily my brother-in-law was home as it turned out that a big evergreen tree next to the house was rubbing against the feed from the street pole and had worn away the insulation. It finally got bad enough that he started hearing the sparking right outside his bedroom window, cut all the power in the house and called the electric company to come out and relpace the feed line.

And yes, they DID cut back the tree.

Tom

Time to share electrical horror stories.

I was living in a house in Tampa Florida and one day the power just went out. After checking with the neighbors I determined it was just my house and there was no evidence of a blown out fuse or breaker.

So I called the electric company and they sent some one out.
Checking later with the wife they said that the workers were digging a hole in my back yard (buried supply line). I went home at lunch and sure enough just to the side of the walkway around the pool they had dug down several feet and the cable was exposed.

The diagnosis was that during the construction of the pool the supply line had been "Nicked" and that after about 8 years enough corrosion had occurred and the system finally shorted out.

I still wonder how this might have ended differently with me floating in the pool with margarita in hand when an event occured.

Obviously the code for minimum distances of underground cables and pool construction must have been lacking or ignored. Glad I'm out of that house.

My bet: dropped neutral. (same thing Rod suspects)

Are you giving odds? :)

Is your underground service copper or aluminum?

Dissimilar materials will get ya every time.

Sounds too widespread in the house to be one of the legs.. but it could be.

Have any transformers gone bad (garage door opener, clock radios etc)?

Keep us informed.

Good luck,

Tim

I still wonder how this might have ended differently with me floating in the pool with margarita in hand when an event occured.


Responded to a fire here, complete loss.

Meanwhile, house across the street says smoke is coming out of her electric wall heater in the bathroom.

Development has all underground electric wiring.

Turns out the excavator working across the street grabbed the service wires and pulled them about a foot. When they opened the splice box to inspect, there was no splice.. they had to dig outside the box to uncover the splice. Over time the wires shorted..

So anyway, to the point.. Neighbors state when they were in their pool they had a tingly feeling. It was like that for a long time, I guess they figured that was normal??

NB: pool+tingly≠normal!

Tim

Just an update. First thing Monday morning we had the utilities come back out and they put some sort of monitor on our meter. They were going to leave it on for a few days to record what was going on to see if the problem is in their lines or in our house. As soon as they get the results, I'll call my electrician in if necessary. They said they could give the results of the monitor to me so I can give it to my electrician to help him identify the problem. I'll update again when we get the results of the monitor.

I opened up the panel and did a visual inspection and didn't see anything obviously wrong. Everything was connected, but don't know how tight. Those are massive cables coming in and they are clearly making contact with the bolts they connect to, but I don't know how tight they need to be to work.

We haven't had any problems with any electrical appliances dieing, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll be OK until this is fixed. I'm certainly not going to plug in any of my new home theater equipment until it's resolved.

Guy

I am not sure how widespread the flickering is and I don't know any history of your construction thread but I will offer this...I am using a few insteon dimmers and combining them with some x-10 devices.

Sometimes I notice that my lights flicker once in awhile before or after I dim them....I bet I am way off here though :eek:

I am not sure how widespread the flickering is and I don't know any history of your construction thread but I will offer this...I am using a few insteon dimmers and combining them with some x-10 devices.

Sometimes I notice that my lights flicker once in awhile before or after I dim them....I bet I am way off here though :eek:

Yeah, the problem is all over the house. I do have 3 Insteon dimmers installed in the home theater, but the flickering still happens around the house even when I shut off power to the panel feeding the home theater, so I doubt the Insteons are causing it.

Thanks,
Guy

Have you had any problems with rodents, squirrels in the attic?
Check to see if the all of the breakers match the panels (should be the same brand).
Nailed anything into the walls lately?

Have you had any problems with rodents, squirrels in the attic?
Check to see if the all of the breakers match the panels (should be the same brand).
Nailed anything into the walls lately?

A few years back we had mice in the house, but we think we have gotten rid of all of them. We don't hear them or see any new evidence of them.

All of the breakers do match the panel, they are all Siemens.

I have nailed a few things to the walls lately. I've been hanging my GOM/Linacoustic frames, and was nailing to the wall a day or two before this started happening. That was my first suspician. I did nail a finish nail into a stud and I knew that there was Romex stapled to the side. I used my stud finder and stapled to the middle of the stud, in hopes that I wouldn't hit the Romex. I did shut off the breaker for the circuit for the romex that I nailed next to, and the flickering problem did not go away, so I'm assuming that means I'm OK. Could a nail piercing Romex on one circuit flicker lights on all the rest of the circuits in the house?

Guy

My guess:

Two much draw on one of the phases.

If it's an old house with knob/tube I'd guess a loose/broken neutral connection.

I would suggest holding your ear against the main panel with the door shut and see if you can hear any noise or fizzing sounds that would be indicative of arcing. You can try shutting off the main breaker for your panel and tightening the screws in the breaker and nuetral bus bar. I would do the same in the sub panel as well. An ampmeter would be helpful too.
Just my .02

Brian

I would suggest holding your ear against the main panel with the door shut and see if you can hear any noise or fizzing sounds that would be indicative of arcing. You can try shutting off the main breaker for your panel and tightening the screws in the breaker and nuetral bus bar. I would do the same in the sub panel as well. An ampmeter would be helpful too.
Just my .02

Brian

We have a winner!

I wanted to come back are report the resolution of the problem in case anyone is curious. We had the utilities company come out and put a monitor on our feed, and it was just fine.

So then we had the electrician that upgraded our panel from a 100A panel to a 200A panel come out to try and help us figure out what was causing it. He said everything looked great in the panel, with one exception. There was one breaker that was a little loose. He didn't know for sure if that would cause it, but he tightened it and told us to let him know if the problem went away. Sure enough, the problem seems to have gone away now. I never got around to listening to the panel to see if I could hear arcing, but hopefully this is now behind me.

Thanks for everyone's advice.

Guy