(This one may not be of interest to any but electricians). The memorable job today was at an early 1970s house. It had suffered a couple of remodels. A bedroom and bathroom were dead (no hot). After peeking and poking around a little, I resorted to my wire tracer to see where the (good) neutral went. That might point me to the right thing to tear apart. But I never got to trace that neutral. Here's why. The last electrical remodel was recent enough that they had sold the owner a safety package deal. Not only did they put in a new panel, they loaded it with half a dozen arc-fault breakers. To get a signal onto the neutral I have to bring a hot from elsewhere. Usually it is handy to grab that from a good outlet away from the outage area. When I tried that, an arc-fault breaker tripped because they have GFCI sensitivity built into them (for some reason). My tracer wanted to use current along a hot without sending it back on the same neutral. I tried a good outlet on another circuit. It tripped another AFCI. The whole place seemed to be either AFCI or GFCI protected! That forced me to open the panel and get power from a rare normal breaker. Well, an AFCI still tripped! Why? Because the circuit whose neutral I wanted to trace was AFCI protected too, and once a little current started flowing through my tracer onto that neutral (without coming from that circuit's hot), the GFCI feature foiled me again. But all was not lost. At least this finally told me which circuit my outage was on (you can't trust labels). So then I could turn the circuit off and see that some working living room and hall lights and outlets were part of the circuit. I got acquainted with how few connections these working things had and how few the dead ones had. Looks like I have to bite the bullet and go up in that 3/12 pitch attic. With the circuit on, I crawled the length of the attic to where my non-contact tester could follow the live cables to where they went dead. It wasn't clear among the half-dozen junction boxes I found up there (from a 1980s redo) which one was the most likely culprit. When I hit those J-boxes, none of them set off the loud buzzer I had plugged in down in the dead bedroom below. So I guessed and opened a small round box that had 5 12-2 cables entering it. Poking at the black splice there set off my buzzer. I don't usually do this, but I killed the circuit right there by faulting the hot to ground. Who wants to crawl up here more than once? With some difficulty I got the splice redone. The lesson from this house? The new liability of not being able to trace a dead AFCI circuit (without replacing its breaker temporarily with a normal breaker) is offset by the new ability to easily identify the dead circuit because it will trip when its neutral is given current. In the trenches.
November 10, 2006
First job was a bedroom and hall out. Plug tester said nothing was hot. Wiggled some of the dead outlets to see if I could get a little life back. No show. The lady pointed me to the panel. Everything looked on there. But my fingers got one breaker to move a little out of ON. Too easily. So I pushed it way off, then hard on. Now she was happy. Her daughter had been using a space heater.
Next job up a mountain. Vacant house had an airplane's view. Kitchen lights were dead. No life at the switch. The landlady had her handyman showed me where the panel was. Two breakers sat tripped. Must have been a little more was dead than she knew. Then she wanted me to hook up a cooktop that had replaced the old one. I expected a small can of worms. I got a big one. The hookup actually looked easy. But why was the line dead when all the breakers were on? She said the old one may not have worked for awhile either. Back at the panel I looked for a cooktop-sized cable and found one. It wasn't in the panel. Had been pulled out and replaced by some other cable. I later traced that to an illegal generator interface, pulled it out, and put our cooktop one in. Some tenant who eats out must have disliked mountain power irregularities. But the story goes on. Putting our cable back in, I found water sitting on and around the main breaker. Not healthy. Sopped that up fine, but the ugly thing I found was all the neutrals on one side were toasted. It was the side used by whoever wired the newer parts of the house. They had a light touch with the screwdriver. She said the house would be torn down in a year or two anyway. I said the circuits wouldn't last that long with a tenant using things. So she had me do what I had to do to restore solid connections.
Last job today was a few things dead after the guy says he was cutting a lampcord shorter. With it still plugged in. Yes, live. He admitted to being not all there. Now this lamp was plugged in near a GFI in the kitchen. The GFI wouldn't reset. Don't let that fool you. For one thing, it was a newer GFI. It wasn't tripping, just wouldn't catch hold when you try to reset. That means no power to it. For another thing, the cord he cut was just two-wire. That doesn't bother a GFI. But it should have bothered the breaker. Show me the panel! Again things looked OK on first glance. But that double-pole 20-amp was a little off. Why a double pole for two circuits? There can be reasons. Anyway, I reset that. Looks like it was a day for tripped breakers. In the trenches.
October 23, 2006
A busy day. First and easiest, Mrs. Shaw. All she had done was unscrew an indoor flood from a recessed can. And I saw that the bulb was now hanging by some wires. Usually that means the glass broke loose from its metal threads and I need to use my needlenose (spread outward) to remove the metal end from the socket. But this was different. Never seen a bulb designed to unthread from its metal end. This was a compact fluorescent flood and it got ruined by this unscrewing. I replaced it.
Next a sad story. This guy's mobilehome had oodles of electronic stuff. Most of it got fried back in June, he said. So the power company thought they found a bad neutral in the transformer and replaced it. Now his next set of stuff fried, some in spite of good surge protectors. Sustained higher voltage isn't a surge. It's a melted icecap, not a little thing like a tsunami. Lights were getting bright, then dim, some of them popping. He was there. This wasn't happening when I arrived. OK, sounds like the power company was wrong. But we have to be sure the bad main neutral isn't in my customer's meterbox or panel. The panel had no 120 volt breakers sharing a neutral and the damage wasn't limited to two circuits anyway. The panel neutral was tight and looked good. There is this rigid strap that connects the neutral bar on one side to the other. I thought I saw a little discoloration near one screw holding it together. Nope, it was tight and OK underneath. How about a big junction box underneath the home for the main feed to the panel? Some mobiles have this. I crawled under enough to see there was none. Then what about the outdoor meter/disconnect on his pole? Neutrals in and out of there checked out. There was even a feed from there directly to his shop building. Did anything out there get hurt? He said it did in June but he hadn't checked this time. We went out there. Garage door opener was dead. Hmmm. This confirmed that the problem was back ahead of the meter setup. I called the power company. But I knew they might not take this comes-and-goes problem seriously enough. And the guy needed to be able to use his computer (it escaped) without anxiety. So I proposed putting all his 120-volt breakers onto the same phase in the panel. That's what we did. That would keep a bad main neutral from getting at them from the other phase (see main opens). Right as I finished that, power company shows up. This lineman is used to false alarms. He considers everything I have to say. And the fact that the neighbor off the same transformer had no problem in June or now. He subjects his line to a load test and finds no problem. But, he admits, since I'm still there waiting to see what he'll do, he'll keep looking. He redoes connections atop the meter pole. I'm still there. So he goes up near the transformer. I have to get on to the next job, so I leave. That night my customer calls. He says they found a neutral wiggling in its crimp connector. Wrong size maybe. They gave him the old connector. He'll see if his insurance or the power company will still refuse to reimburse him with that to wave in their faces.
What easy job was I leaving that one for? Not. Outlets and lights dead in parts of a living room, bathroom and a bedroom. In the living room they read "open neutral". In the bath/bedroom just "dead". Hmmm. It did turn out to be two problems on the same circuit. I found the bad neutral in the living room. A melted wirenut (from aluminum wire). Fine, but now the bath/bed area is still dead. Is it on the same circuit? Only my wire tracer knew for sure. Running signal back on the now-good neutral showed it was the same circuit path as the living room. Where, oh where is the hot bad? Well, after checking at a couple of the first dead things, I went in the attic. The line there was dead from the living room outlet where I had just fixed the neutral! Opened that back up. The black wires weren't melty but they weren't connected well. Now they are. Case closed. In the trenches.
For more troubleshooting stories, see Eastside-of-Seattle electrician.
