Freaking house electrical problems!!

[Nitrousbird]

I'm driving home from work tonight, get home ~6:45, thinking I'll eat some dinner, and work a little on the Jimmy (motor swap in slow progress).

 

Roomate is here, says her PC won't boot up, and something seems funny with the lights.. All the upstairs lights are really dim; everything downstairs is fine. Hmmm, turn more lights on, dimmer they get, until everything is out....then they stay out. Mind you I've owned this place over 3 years, and bought it off the original owners from 1968, and I've never had any electrical problems w/ the place.

 

Bust out my multimeter, and only reading 5V AC on all the room electric outlets that have dim lights (and a few other outlets).

 

After plenty of work narrowing down crap at the circuit breaker, I found out it is the main breaker that feeds the bottom half of the breaker panel is bad on the right side. Nice; I think that damn thing is the original 1968 model put in here when the house was built (old style Pushmatic for those wondering).

 

My circuit panel is freaking stupid. It doesn't have a main breaker; rather is had 4 rows of breakers powering various things (AC unit, garage, stove wiring, etc.). Then it breaks off, and that's where this breaker that went bad feeds everything else....freaking stupid design.

 

Go to Home Depot, they only carry 50A instead of the 60A I have. Lowes is the same deal....damn. Ended up buying the 50A (nothing heavily loaded on this breaker anyway). Find that it doesn't fit. I have a buddy I know that knows his stuff about house electric (I know AC/DC circuits and all that jive, but jack about home wiring). He said I bought a newer style "Pushmatic" breaker, and had to just grind down the plastic tab on it. Did that, worked like a charm, fixed the problem.

 

BUT THEN ANOTHER FREAKING PROBLEM SHOWS UP!!!. Turn everything back on, and I hear this buzzing sound from the breaker box (same buzzing sound you hear from street lights). Narrow it down to one 20A breaker.

 

More narrowing down later (this takes a while), the one line that feeds just the fridge circuit is what was causing the buzzing....only does it when fridge is running. Run to store again, buy new outlet. Replace, check wiring both ends, looks good. STILL BUZZING. Now nothing is getting warm or smelling, so I'm not too worried, but still want to fix it. End up putting that line on another 20A breaker that doesn't run much, and the buzzing went away. Of course, this took all together almost 4 hours out of my evening.

 

Now I gotta call my buddy again to see if what I did w/ the line in the breaker is cool, or if there is anything else I should check. Ugh....only positive thing is I learned a few things tonight.

[desperado]

I will talk to a couple guys I know and see if they have a 60 AMP pushomatic. It sounds like you might also have a loose netural. When the lights get dim do other lights get brighter? That is a tell tail sign of it a loose netural. As far as the buzzing breaker, same deal, I will talk to a electrican friend, and look at work. We pulled several pushomatic panels, so I may have a 20 amp breaker. If not and you can't find one through the normal channels, there are companies that are called breaker brokers. They would have it but it would be pricy. If you have any questions let me know. I will do what i can to help

[Nitrousbird]

Nothing got brighter when the other lights got dimmer. Swapping the 60A breaker for the 50A seemed to have fixed the problem as far as power goes; all the lights are their normal brightness, and everything off of those circuits seems to be working right.

 

All of my neutrals at the breaker seemed tight (didn't take a screwdriver to the terminals, but did shake the wires around a bit). My troublesome outlet was tight on everything, and is definately right w/ the new outlet I swapped in.

 

I'm curious as to why moving my fridge to another breaker fixed the buzzing sound. The wiring in this house is definately screwy; what each ciruit has doesn't make a whole lot of sense. My house is a mixed ranch/split level (3 levels total); and the circuit feeding the fridge also fed my crawlspace light, lowest level electrical outlets (but NOT lights), and only 2 of the second level outlets. The wire to the fridge outlet seems to be a dedicated wire; I couldn't find any other outlets/lights that were off of that line.

 

I am going to bring my outlet tester from work home tomorrow to make sure all of my outlets are wired correctly (far quicker than the 3 multimeter measurement at each outlet to check).

 

I do appreciate you looking into this w/ your electrican buddies. I don't want anything bad to happen to my house!

[Akula]

Swap that whole thing out for a standard Square D panel, just go pull your meter and change it out.

[Alex1647545498]

That sux, only 3 years

[Casper]

I'll call my uncle. He runs a electrical hardware store here in Columbus. He's been in the business for around 30yrs. If anyone in town knows, its him.

 

Funny story about my uncle Kevin: One time we had a breaker take a shit at my old house. I had no idea what I was doing, so I called him. He was walking me through replacing the breaker over the phone. As he's saying "make sure you don't touch the screw and the rail with the screwdriver", my Nextel dies. Horrible service in the basement. I didn't think anything of it, and went ahead and finished it. I finish up, put the breaker box back together, go upstairs, and grab a drink. My Nextel starts going crazy with voicemails. Everything from "Ben oh my God are you okay" to "Ben fucking call me so I know you're okay" to "I don't want to have to call your dad and tell him I killed you". So yeah, he thought I got the shit shocked out of me and that I was lying dead somewhere. Funny shit. I called him back and let him know I was alright.

[Nitrousbird]

Swap that whole thing out for a standard Square D panel, just go pull your meter and change it out.

Hey, if you want to buy the new panel and spend the time wiring it up for me, I'll buy the pizza and beer.

[desperado]

Hey, if you want to buy the new panel and spend the time wiring it up for me, I'll buy the pizza and beer.

 

Are you going to be paying for the panel? If so I might be willing to do that, no beer though.

 

Get me a breaker count (number of breakers in the panel) and what size they are, and I will get you a price on the hardware. Pls take a pic of the panel so I can see how it is hung in/on the wall.

[Nitrousbird]

I had someone tell me to just steal a panel from a construction site. Luckily for construction site people, I'm not a theif.

 

I was talking to one of my guy's at work today, who used to do electrical work. From what I described to him, he said to upgrade to anything worthwhile, I have to replace it all. Power feeding into the panel from the meter, and the wiring from the meter to the mast = have to have certified electrician do it and be inspected.

 

For now, I don't have the $$ to do that. Once I decide to start wiring 220 in places and adding more stuff, I'll have to. For now, I'll just keep what I have.

[Mensan]

I can help you out if you want. I know a little bit about electricity. You should have my number.

[desperado]

Funny story about my uncle Kevin: One time we had a breaker take a shit at my old house. I had no idea what I was doing, so I called him. He was walking me through replacing the breaker over the phone. As he's saying "make sure you don't touch the screw and the rail with the screwdriver", my Nextel dies. Horrible service in the basement. I didn't think anything of it, and went ahead and finished it. I finish up, put the breaker box back together, go upstairs, and grab a drink. My Nextel starts going crazy with voicemails. Everything from "Ben oh my God are you okay" to "Ben fucking call me so I know you're okay" to "I don't want to have to call your dad and tell him I killed you". So yeah, he thought I got the shit shocked out of me and that I was lying dead somewhere. Funny shit. I called him back and let him know I was alright.

 

Damn man, that's a riot. I actually had a 480 3 phase motor control cabnet go up in front of me with the door open. The company I was doing work for manufacutred composite materials, including carbon fiber cloth. Strainge thing is that carbon fiber will conduct, and the shit gets EVERYEHERE. I closed the door and forgot something soI pulled it open real quick again. Some fibers got across the fuses in the panel and arced. It ended up blowing 3 breakers including a 600 amp disconnect on the main buss that ran through the top of the plant. The light was so bright that they said I cast a shadow 100 foot away on a wall. Of course, being the true badass I am, snearing at danger, and laughing in the face of death, it spooked the hell out of me. But when they got everything reset, it all still worked. They started callin me sparkie after that, not sure why.

 

Joe, as far as that needing to be inspected, it really depends on where you live. I did my mothers after she lost her meter can (box the meter goes in). AEP did come out and cut teh wire off the house for me so it was dead, but I replaced everything above the breaker box all the way to the weather head and then AEP reconnected it for me, that was in Reynoldsburg though. Different municipalities have different requirements. I wasn't able to find any pushomatic breakers today, but I will keep an eye out. As far as the buzzing breaker. I am going to assume that the breaker is about to go bad. The way that breakers work is that the current flows through a special spring that keeps the breaker from popping. When there is too muvh current the spring heats up and looses it's tension, it then releases the contacts and it opens.

That spring is somewhat like a lightbulb filiment. If you have ever heard a lightbulb buzzing just before it burns out, that is the say thing that you are hearing in that breaker.

 

Now from what you were saying about one breaker feeding outlets on all three floors, I would say that the house was wired in the 70's. Code has changed a good bit. But that is not to alarm you. If it was goingto burn down because of the wiring, chances are it already would have. If you deside to rewire, let me know. It's not a hard thing to do, pulling the new wire into place is the biggest pain and what takes a up the most time. But that part I am sure that you can handle, then I could come in behind you and look it over and hook it all up, if you would deside to go that route.