Friday, June 3, 2011

What causes a household voltage to increase and decrease?

The voltage in the house that my friend rents in peculiar. At times the lights will dim and brighten seemingly on their own. The brightness may also change when other lights are turned on or off, if the fridge door is opened, etc. The house is small, with a well pump, water heater, 2 bedroom, kitchen, living room, 1 bathroom, outside lights, etc. The landlord%26#039;s house operates off the same transformer, and he has no problems. An electrician checked it out and found that when the voltage drops on one pole, the other increases, and vice versa. No matter what the sum of the poles is about 248. Each pole had the same number of single pole breakers, but the electrician moved them so all single pole breaker are on one pole, and the problem is still there. They also saw the same problems when they tried different combinations of unplugging the fridge, unscrewing light bulbs, shutting breakers off, etc. f%26#039;d like to use my ohmmeters and lengths of wire to check the continuity of ground, neutral, and hot lines between different outlets and light fixtures when the main breaker is off. It seems to me that there%26#039;s a problem with a ground and/or neutral line somewhere, but I%26#039;m not sure where. Maybe somwhere the neutral and hot lines are switched. Any ideas about what could cause this?|||Sounds like the service might need upgraded, and a good electrician will when installing the new breaker box, wire the circuits so the hot neutral and ground are where they should be.|||Sounds to me like your floating your ground. Since the total voltage is remaining constant, but the individual sums is varying, that tells me that the center point is moving. The center point is the ground. Obviously it is not %26quot;tagged%26quot; correctly and is shifting around depending on your branch loads.|||Get a small plug in outlet checker. It looks like a stand 3 prong plug with a set of lights on it. You plug it into each outlet and it will tell you if the outlet is wired wrong or as a previsous persaid you have a floating ground.


This will help isolate the problem.


Do this SOON.


Eric