Electrician's advice needed ASAP

[MrShpongle]

One of the circuits in my house (totally unrelated to my grow room) has gone crazy. I'm getting power surges and dropouts randomly on one circuit - everything else is normal. I'm reading as high as 193 volts on some outlets and 40-50 volts on others. When I turned the breaker off, I still get 35 volts on some outlets, while others go to zero. Again, this is all limited to a single circuit.

My guess is that somewhere another circuit is bleeding into this one, but I have no idea how or why. The house had a completely new electrical system installed in 1992. A sparky friend has suggested that I shut down power to the entire house, find one of outlets that stayed hot even when the breaker was off, and wire the neutral to the ground as a way to solve the problem. Is this safe? I have plenty of experience to do this sort of repair, but I don't have enough to search the entire house for the short that started all of this.

 

[Iron_Lion]

Are you reading hot to ground or hot to neutral?

 

[MrShpongle]

That was hot to neutral. I checked some more and I'm getting 120 volts from both hot to ground and neutral to ground, so now I'm thinking that my previous solution isn't a good idea. I turned off each of the other circuits and found the one that was energizing the faulty one, so now I've got it isolated a bit (and I can tell my wife that the rest of the house is safe to leave turned on). Now what?

 

[Iron_Lion]

It sounds like you lost your neutral somewhere down the line. Very strange voltage readings usually means no neutral. Once you are able to find the broken neutral and get it repaired voltage should go back to normal.

Unfortunately what this means is you will have to isolate each receptacle on the circuit and go box to box looking for burnt wires or loose connections.

 

[Tilt]

pull all the outlets out on the circuit with the problem turn off power to them first. and redo the connections. The most reliable connection method is wire nut the black to black and pigtail out to to the receptacle under the brass screw not stabbed into the back. doo the same for the nuetrals under the silver screw.

 

[Tilt]

Iron Lion is right on the lost nuetral. the nuetrals will start to carry voltage and current if lost.

 

[Iron_Lion]

Irie

irON

 

[MrShpongle]

I'm 75% of the way through the outlets and everything looks OK so far. The outlets don't have screws in back (except for the ground), so I'm stuck stabbing the hot and neutral into the backs of them. If they end up looking good, I assume my next step is to check switch boxes, ceiling lights, and any junction boxes I find in the basement?

 

[Iron_Lion]

here's a little tip designate all of the receptacles in order, go recept to recept and check the voltage, what you should see is up to a point voltage is GOOD, then after a certain point voltage is BAD, this will give you your starting point.

If you do check every connection and everything is good next step is a tricky one, you'd have to ohm out the neutrals at every point in the circuit. Sometimes squirrels or mice can get in the walls and bite thru wires, this causes a huge headache in a place you wouldnt normally think to look.


120 receptacle wireing looks like this
8 represents a plug, = is the hot and neutral
panel ==== A.8 =====B.8======C.8====D.8

So you can have a problem between B and D somewhere but A will be fine.

 

[MrShpongle]

OK, I'm officially mystified. With the power off, I'm getting 120 volts off all of the neutrals and 30 volts to all of the hots. That looks like two problems to me, not one. I'm calling an electrician friend and biting the bullet on this one unless you folks have any suggestions.

Thanks for all of your help. I thought this was going to be simpler than it's turning out to be. Pray that I don't end up spending too much to get this resolved.

 

[Iron_Lion]

OK, I'm officially mystified. With the power off, I'm getting 120 volts off all of the neutrals and 30 volts to all of the hots. That looks like two problems to me, not one. I'm calling an electrician friend and biting the bullet on this one unless you folks have any suggestions.

Thanks for all of your help. I thought this was going to be simpler than it's turning out to be. Pray that I don't end up spending too much to get this resolved.

Its best to have a qualified person do the thorough check.

 

[gardenbug]

OK, I'm officially mystified. With the power off, I'm getting 120 volts off all of the neutrals and 30 volts to all of the hots. That looks like two problems to me, not one. I'm calling an electrician friend and biting the bullet on this one unless you folks have any suggestions.

Thanks for all of your help. I thought this was going to be simpler than it's turning out to be. Pray that I don't end up spending too much to get this resolved.

That is sounding like the neutral has shorted to something and became the hot, the 30 volts on the hots could be bleeding through a load (something plugged in somewhere).

 

[the_extremist]

Almost 100% certain you have a broken neutral wire somewhere. Sounds to me like the circuit giving you trouble is probably one half of a multi-wire branch circuit. This is when two different 120V circuits share the same neutral at a certain point and then head back to the panel board as one three wire cable, like a 14/3 or 12/3 romex.