New electrical puzzle in the house

[Falcon67]

Here's a good one for you to chew on. My wife has to have a fan running at night, no exceptions. You older fellas are probably familiar with your ladies that have internal environmental issues beyond their control. *****.

Sometime late or early - probably around 2AM but it's not my habit to look at a clock if I have to get up in the night - wife wakes up because the fan isn't running. After I come out of the fog, we note that the master fan/light and at least 4 of the wall plugs are not operational. I get an extension cord for her sleep fan and take a look at the breaker box. Nothing tripped. I cycle the breakers labeled for the master (iffy - I didn't label) and still the only outlet in the room working is south wall under the bed. East, north, west plug and one on the south west corner, fan/light combo all dead. Just made sure we left the fan/light off and went back to bed as nothing could be done at that hour.

Wake up 6:00 am as normal thanks to the light plugged in on the west wall on a timer - hey, wait a minute. Fan/overhead light now works, plugs are hot. WTF.

I'll let you know what I find, just can't start troubleshooting until later this evening. They way this house is wired, there's no telling what.

No GFCI on any of this circuit (that I know of anyway). No arc breakers - all regular run of the mill GE stuff in the box. (about 16 years old now) Only work lately - several months ago - was to put a dimmer in the fan light circuit when I changed the bulbs to LEDs. I suspect something in the fan part of the circuit, but that's just a SWAG.

 

[Pwrgeek]

Loose connection. I'd suspect behind the dimmer just installed.


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[My Old Tools]

Check the screws in the breaker box. My bet is a loose white.

 

[Falcon67]

Both on my list. Will start at the box and work back towards the fan. Dimmer should not have anything to do with the outlets I would think. But then this is the house that had a copper serving as a neutral for the master bath vanity light and the HLV.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

Back stabbed outlet?

 

[CNGsaves]

Have to ask it . . . . Have you been Banging The Neighbor's Wife ?? . .

 

[dogdog]

Bad Dream ?

 

[dave*99]

Loose connection. I'd suspect behind the dimmer just installed.


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This

And if not, then maybe backstabbed outlets. Try tapping the outlets with your fist and look for flickering lights.

 

[G_P]

Back stabbed outlet?

Good probability if they are backstabbed, they are causing the issue. I hate those stupid things and whoever decided to allow them to be used is an idiot.

 

[UpNorther]

I'd go back and double check the dimmer switch and any connections in the box.
Years ago was doing some remodel in a flipper house, they had a dimmer that was wired incorrectly. It not only controlled the room light, it also controlled another 6 outlets among 2 floors. lol

 

[Falcon67]

All I had to do was look at the APC strip for the TV to start the troubleshooting.

Turns out, the entire room is on one breaker.

Power - I think - enters at P1. P1 does not have a wiring fault but it's under a king size bed behind the headboard and we didn't feel like wrestling the bed yesterday. So I suspect the open ground starts there. The wiring in the panel is good - did find a lot of loose ground and neutral screws but not for this run. All tight now.

The fun part - power comes in at P1. Goes to P2, then P3, then P4, up and over to P5 (only outlet pigtailed) then up and over to the fan switch/dimmer (S+D) then 12-3 out to the fan. Except for P5, everything is in on one set of screws and out on the other. The outlets don't have the ability to be back-stabbed. So apparently a better grade maybe. They do not appear to be the cheap variety.

All grounds are done like this

If the fault really is in P1, then that will fix it for now. Later I'll find some other circuit to put the fan/light on so at least the room can be lit if a plug needs service. Oh, and no service loops in the runs - wires are pulled tight from hole to hole in the attic. P2 and P3 are outside wall so I can't even get to those.

The panel is so nice and neat - had to cut tie wraps to trace the wires. Everything run professionally, down the side and curved into the breakers. At the plugs, Joe Day-labor did the work, insulation under the screws, wires wadded up, 1/4" of copper on this one, 1" hanging out on the next screw, etc

 

[Falcon67]

Fixed. The outlet behind the bed had another hack copper. Barely 1" sticking out to wrap with the other feed and it was wadded up with the sheath and paper. Best i could do was clean out the mess and cut the sheath back more and wind the copper tight.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

******* hacks!!

Thats worse than backstabbed outlets!

 

[Falcon67]

The difference between the panel and the plugs is like a Chip Foose build vs a rat rod. The outlet behind the dresser was "how has this even worked". I'm sure it'll bug me until I decide to re-pull that feed. I got what copper there was clean and managed about 1" of twist so it's a solid connection, but when I first looked in there it was cut so short I thought maybe there wasn't any at all. Before we agreed to by the house in 2010 - it was a re-po - I checked all the plugs in every room with a tester. Ended up marking three with open grounds but this room tested OK. Just goes to prove that shoddy work will eventually fail in some fashion. Took 16 years, but it finally did it. I had a side project going to change the cream outlets to white, maybe need to get back on that. No telling what else would turn up. Like the outlet box under the sheet rock behind the right hand sink in the master bath. There's a wire in there and it's hot too.

 

[rlitman]

Another option would be to use a back-clamp outlet (not the push-in style, but the type where the screws clamp onto the wires in the rear; you see this in GFIs, but better outlets can be found with them too).

If you use one of these, you won't need as much wire behind it, because you won't need to twist anything.

 

[Falcon67]

Good idea but I don't think that would work - should have taken a pic but I was in a hurry since that big wave of storms was bearing down on us. The feed coming in to the box was stripped back so that maybe about 1" of whole sheath is in the box, then they cut the copper on that maybe 1" out from there. The sheath cut looked more torn than "cut", then they just wrapped the leftovers up with the two coppers. There was only about 2 twists because it was so short. The hot and neutral are decently long but the one short copper is all way in the back of the box. Almost all the boxes are done the same way - one copper cut way back into the box, one long going to the outlet.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

The difference between the panel and the plugs is like a Chip Foose build vs a rat rod. The outlet behind the dresser was "how has this even worked". I'm sure it'll bug me until I decide to re-pull that feed. I got what copper there was clean and managed about 1" of twist so it's a solid connection, but when I first looked in there it was cut so short I thought maybe there wasn't any at all. Before we agreed to by the house in 2010 - it was a re-po - I checked all the plugs in every room with a tester. Ended up marking three with open grounds but this room tested OK. Just goes to prove that shoddy work will eventually fail in some fashion. Took 16 years, but it finally did it. I had a side project going to change the cream outlets to white, maybe need to get back on that. No telling what else would turn up. Like the outlet box under the sheet rock behind the right hand sink in the master bath. There's a wire in there and it's hot too.

Wait a minute. Is the year 2026 and all my clocks and phones are wrong?

 

[UpNorther]

The guys were hacks.
From the picture it looks like the lower Neutral insulation is cracked and splitting. Also looks like the insulation on the lower Hot is being rubbed off by a screw or sharp edge of the outlet.
Should give them each a wrap of tape.

 

[Falcon67]

Wait a minute. Is the year 2026 and all my clocks and phones are wrong?

LOL - the problems in the house were there when they put it together in 2000~2001.

- no earth ground at panel or meter base, no rods, no UFER
- Bath fans used 12-3, needed 12-4, used copper as return leg to light switch in both bath rooms
- Master bath vanity light - power to back porch GFCI runs through it, also used copper for switch leg return because they didn't pull enough wire.
- (from what I can remember) at least 4 open grounds and I think a couple of hot/neutral reverses during my pre-purchase inspection (sold as is-where is)
- No GFCI outlets in the garage
- No GFCI outlets in kitchen
- the above copper outlet issues, grounds had been "working" since 2000/2001 up until Sunday night.

Previous owners lived with these issues until we came along. Co-op engineers came and fixed the earthing/meter base issues for no charge when we called it in after the purchase. The rest I just fixed when discovered. Even as a rank amateur it's a shock ( ) to open up a switch box and see a copper nutted up with a bunch of neutrals.

>Also looks like the insulation on the lower Hot is being rubbed off by a screw or sharp >edge of the outlet.
I didn't see that, you may be seeing texture hanging off the wires. Some of these boxes have so much texture sprayed in them you can't tell black from white.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

Geez

Your house is newer than mine(1996) and i dont have any of those issues.

 

[My Old Tools]

I had a problem today on a 10 year old connection in a high end custom house, mine. The bedroom central AC started kicking the breaker during the night. Reset and it would run 15-20 minutes and kick again. I checked all the capacitors I installed last week, all good. I was about to swap out the breaker and try another one. When I pulled the 220v 30a breaker, the black wire fell off the breaker screw. The insulation was bubbled back about an inch. I cut it back a reinstalled it, tightened everything down, and now its runnng nice and cool. That breaker hadn't been touched since it was put in in 2006.

 

[Falcon67]

So that guy in that goofy DIY video was right - electricity makes the wires vibrate and they work loose!

 

[rlitman]

So that guy in that goofy DIY video was right - electricity makes the wires vibrate and they work loose!

You laugh, but I've seen that. Though only on transformer connections.
Transformer hum can cause all sorts of issues. That's why the connections to the winding are often welded.

 

[Tim The Tool Man]

I just got called to fix an electrical problem at a medical building. The wall was humming very loudly but would stop for a while if the doctor punched the wall. I took a look on the other side of the wall an found a service panel. About half of the wires were lose on the breakers and almost all the neutrals took one to four turns....

 

[My Old Tools]

Yep, you could hear this one humming too.