electrician needed

[joerusso]

I have a few questions. First I want to determine wether or not you are calling the nuetral the ground when you say there is 45V on the ground. Actually I would hope that is the case since 45V on the actual ground could be very dangerous. If not what are you using as a referrence when you measure 45V on the ground? The only real way I can think of to measure this is with one lead on the ground bus in the main panel and one lead at the ground you are measuring. If that's what you are doing then your ground wire has broken (or burned open) some where between the panel and the measurement point, on top of picking up a voltage somewhere. What two points are you measuring 170V between (hot and nuetral or hot and ground)?

straight at hot and neutral. And it appears that the the ground wire is picking up something or is just damaged at some point since there is little voltage at this wire where there should be none. Its a total mess here! As good as I am, i cannot find the source of this problem and its real bad.

 

[wuarhat]

If you can't find the main panel I'd start at the one breaker that you can find, and measure everything.

neutral to ground voltage

hot to ground voltage

hot to neutral voltage

ground wire to ground (try the kitchen sink) voltage

If this last one isn't dead zero someone is eventually going to get electrocuted. Try measuring the voltage from the body of the refrigerator to the cold water pipe on the sink. As you probably know you don?t even want a fraction of a volt.

As far as the bill is concerned it probably has a meter ID on it. Try to find that meter and trace where it goes. You might be paying your landlord's electric bill for all you know. Check how fast the wheel is spinning then open up your circuit breaker and see if the wheel slows considerably.

 

[bryan1258]

yup

If you can't find the main panel I'd start at the one breaker that you can find, and measure everything.

neutral to ground voltage

hot to ground voltage

hot to neutral voltage

ground wire to ground (try the kitchen sink) voltage

If this last one isn't dead zero someone is eventually going to get electrocuted. Try measuring the voltage from the body of the refrigerator to the cold water pipe on the sink. As you probably know you don?t even want a fraction of a volt.

As far as the bill is concerned it probably has a meter ID on it. Try to find that meter and trace where it goes. You might be paying your landlord's electric bill for all you know. Check how fast the wheel is spinning then open up your circuit breaker and see if the wheel slows considerably.

this person knows what he's speaking of.......you've more than likely got a loose connection on the neutral. Check your ground to neutral connection with a meter. Probe between neutral and ground should read 0 ohms. Make sure you actually have a ground

 

[joerusso]

this person knows what he's speaking of.......you've more than likely got a loose connection on the neutral. Check your ground to neutral connection with a meter. Probe between neutral and ground should read 0 ohms. Make sure you actually have a ground

Great feed back guys! But i been there already and its just amazing!!how this crap apartment is setup. It started out as a house in the front, than of course the landlord started to expand one apartment at a time. he feed all of the electric into one harness coming from the street with no meters until the electric company spotted the high usage. Now we all have separate meters, but I don't some of my electric is really separate--{refer to my bill] anyway I have done all the testing that I know of and even the so called ground wire has some voltage. The refrigerator has voltage as well, just test that with now shoes on...I cannot for the life of me find a short and I even went straight to a good source being my ceiling light fixture since it flashes on and off just a tad with the switch off, indicating a short within this circuit. Still keep in mind that I do not have a breaker box [fuse panel] for anything, so who knows what light or outlet is feeding from where.

I have installed an inversol about a year ago and of course installed a breaker box for this. The only thing I can think of at this time is to replace the wiring within the troubled area which is between the bathroom and the same feed that goes to our 2 bedrooms. All the fixtures in the ceiling from the bathroom to the last bedroom will flicker on and off about 1 second apart timing wise. So there must be a short..frayed old wire,etc. I'm also thinking since my wife's brother has a leak from his bathroom that comes down to us into our ceiling fixture, that the wiring is shorted from the water contact or has burned over time and its very weak, therefore any surge on this circuit results in what we have. This is also a good indication of our high electric bill, since if this is a bad short, it would be like having another A/C or Refrigerator running all day which makes sense. I would have posted this info at the beginning, but since I was just looking for an electrician, I didn't bother to do so. But since we have some influence-rs here with some good ideas, i figured to post the exact info as it stands right now. Anymore ideas on how to pinpoint the problem? This is very hard to find since at any given moment the electric can be 120, than 160 or even too low at 97.. so much for an accurate meter reading...

 

[Fishguy]

Try measuring the voltage from the body of the refrigerator to the cold water pipe on the sink.

I have yet to see a building here plumbed with copper. It's all PVC, so this isn't going to work.

 

[Yachtguy1]

Wow

Okay, I am a certified residential/commercial and Marine electrician who will help you here for real. I feel your pain, Joe, and I hope this advice helps:

1. Hot to Ground normal reading ONLY assures that your system is properly grounded.
2. Hot to Neutral reading tells you what your appliances are experiencing.
3. Ground to Neutral tells you how many volts are present at Ground only.
4. VERY IMPORTANT! Nothing in the known electrical universe will spike the voltage ABOVE the potential from Source. If your building has incoming service potential above 125V 60HZ, then they are either using meter-based voltage regulators or individual Load side regulators. If the building has NO REGULATORS, then ALL of the apartments will experience the same problems. So, if you are the only one experiencing the problem, either your meter (if regulated) is bad or your external regulator is bad.
5. Voltage Drop is likely a symptom of a partially dropped, scorched, or compromised Neutral wire. Again, if you are the only victim of this gremlin, it is DEFINITELY a compromised Neutral. If everyone is experiencing this problem then it is a Source issue.

SUMMARY: I think you may have two problems: A compromised Neutral wire unique to the service feeding your apartment, and a bad service area which is providing you intermittent high/low voltage and amperage capacity. If this advice totally screwed your head up, then please call me by phone in the US ANYTIME (even if it is 3:00 AM) and I will walk you through a couple of quick tests. Best to call when the Drop or Surge is present to do some tests.

310.962.1952

P.S. If you are still there and experiencing this problem next month, then I can swing by and help you out. I will be in SD provisioning my Electrical Services business for the North Coast, but I have family in SD and will need to spend a week or so there to gather supplies and equipment. Good Luck.

 

[Yachtguy1]

Re; WOW

Just read your last post.

Here goes: If there really is voltage on the Grounding conductor, then there is a case fault or dropped Neutral in an appliance somewhere, but this can be confusing as these Grounding conductors are usually bussed (all the service to all the apartments) at a central location and, as AC conductors are directional, the culprit would have to be either in your apartment or in an apartment further from you than this Buss for you to get a reading on the Ground (as the fault voltage will normally take the shortest route to True Earth Ground)

In addition to this already confusing scenario, if you have a compromised Neutral for real, then your apartment (or an appliance within) could be forcing current through an appliance or motor to Ground, and unfortunately this could be intermittent.

Call me if you need to.

 

[Yachtguy1]

And if the problem is only in one or more areas of your house, but the service to your apartment is stable on one or more circuits simultaneously with the surge/drop, then you are correct to assume that the problem is on a single circuit within your apartment. This is VERY EASY to troubleshoot if you have a separate, properly wired breaker panel for your apartment (sorry, as I know this is likely not the case)...

 

[Yachtguy1]

Last post:

Your property owner is likely not conscientious enough to invest in individual power regulators for the lines/meters the electric company FORCED him to install. So, my final word is that the surge problem is probably on the mains (faulty stepdown transformer regulator), and your drop is either also the mains or the neutral you so carefully troubleshot yourself.

SOLUTION: Repair the faulty line on the bedroom/bathroom circuit and invest in a power transformer for your apartment. Modern CVT transformers have clean sinewave output and regulate power both UP and DOWN plus/minus as much as 40%, and they have excellent isolation, short circuit, and surge protection characteristics. I don't sell these, but I could refer you to several manufacturers directly. You will probably never be able to trust the mains in your area, so if I lived there this is how I would sleep at night.

 

[joerusso]

Thansk guy1 I sent ya PM

 

[Luperon]

I would assume someone is stealing your electricity (maybe your landlord) and maybe your problems are related to the theft.

 

[joerusso]

I would assume someone is stealing your electricity (maybe your landlord) and maybe your problems are related to the theft.

Funny you mentioned this because we think the same, but we cannot find out where they are tapped into us since it would be outside of the house. I think at this time we are just going to move out by Dec, but still need to fix this issue because of the high risk of damage to our stuff, not to mention I can't use the microwave, coffee machine, refrigerator, etc at one given time. we always need to unplug the fringe when using the wave, or even the simple coffee machine, we have to unplug all other items--wtf!! this is just crazy!! and it all started about 2 months ago. So either a thief is involved or its a fried wire/bad ground somewhere...We are stressed here and had enough! Thanks for your input

 

[Luperon]

On a night when all neighbors and landlord are home with many lights on, kill the power at your meter. Have your people in place to watch and see whose lights go out. When you see who it is, dont say anything yet. The next day disconnect all your electrical stuff, swap the wires at the meter and send in 220. Not sure what will happen, but revenge is best served sweet.

If they are smart they dont have their lights on your line, just their other appliances, in that case you may need more investigating. But try the 220 thing anyway.

 

[joerusso]

On a night when all neighbors and landlord are home with many lights on, kill the power at your meter. Have your people in place to watch and see whose lights go out. When you see who it is, dont say anything yet. The next day disconnect all your electrical stuff, swap the wires at the meter and send in 220. Not sure what will happen, but revenge is best served sweet.


If they are smart they don't have their lights on your line, just their other appliances, in that case you may need more investigating. But try the 220 thing anyway.

220 would be too kind, How about a dead short! hahahah we are thinking along the same thing here since all we need to do is to put on either our A/C unit, coffee machine and or microwave and my power pack protector will pop. Thank God we have about 6 of them and all in place at each important appliance. But again, I can't say for sure if it's being stolen or its just a real bad wire within the circuit. The only way to see from my experience is to run a new feed from the meter back to the house and just bypass the other feed that is there. Just waiting to find an electrician, or I'm going to take it on myself..Real easy here since i won't need to deal with city codes or have an inspection..he he!! The DR is good for some things---December can't come soon enough though thanks! Joe

 

[wuarhat]

I have yet to see a building here plumbed with copper. It's all PVC, so this isn't going to work.

Excellent point. I didn't think that one through I guess. It's appears that joerusso has found a good reference though.