electrical question: can anyone explain this?

[maradcliff]

Back when I was a handyman, I got a call from a guy who had a brownout. He called late in the evening and I was done for the day. But he agreed to pay the extra cost of an emergency call. He's very lucky he agreed to that. The entire house was wired with 18-2 lamp cord tacked to the baseboard with those cheap baseboard outlets they sold back in those days (this was in the late 70's). When I arrived I noticed a burnt smell when I walked in the door. When I placed my hand over the one outlet where all the wires originated, the wall was very hot. I immediately shut off the power and told the guy to call the fire dept. He refused to call. (The guy was a drunk). As soon as he refused, I just said "then I got to do this), and I started busting open the wall. There was no flame (yet), but the wires were charring wood. I ended up ripping open the whole wall, and dumping a few buckets of water down from the second floor to the basement. Another 10 minutes that place would have been in flames.

This is a long story, but the guy refused to have the place wired correctly, so he just paid me to run one outlet into the kitchen, hook it to the old fuse box (where I changed the fuses to 15A instead of the 30A ones that was there) This box had 2 fuses, one for the lower apt, one for the upper apt, and this guy lived in the upper). After I got that one outlet installed, he told me to just hook all those 18-2 wires to that outlet again. I refused, and told him that if he wanted to do it himself, he could put a plug on the end and plug them in, but I was not going to wire them to the screws on the outlet like they were when I got there. He was pissed, but I told him it's against the law and I can not do it. He paid me, said he'd get someone else to hook it up, and also to clean up and repair all the busted walls.

I should also note that the refrigerator was being run on that 18-2 and I offerred to help him move it to where the new outlet was installed, but he said it dont belong there and went and got another

18-2 lamp cord to plug it in.....

I tried to explain he was living in danger, but he did not care. I just took the check and said "Whatever"....

Mark

[Joseph Meehan]

Mark Lloyd wrote: ..

We hear of lots of problems with those "back stabbed" outlets. I suggest you start going though your whole home one outlet at a time and remove the wire from the back stab terminal and use the screw terminals on the side. Start with the ones you have identified with possible problems. I would also suggest that if you find any outlets that show signs of sparks or bad connections, replace them with top quality outlets (they will not have the back stab terminals) that may cost a dollar or two more than the cheap contractor grade you now have.

[Mark Lloyd]

Yes. I'll start on that today. There's 4 outlets on that line and they all need to be rewired (and maybe replaced). The wire is 12AWG copper, but the outlets are old ones that do allow backstabbed connections with it.

[Bennett Price]

[Calvin Henry-Cotnam]

Not only less bright, but also a shift in its colour spectrum. That can lead to things looking a little "redder" than normal.

[Stormin Mormon]

check voltage at socket. Turn hair dryer on. Check voltage again. See if the run voltage is much lower than no load. Four or five volts is expected.

[jlatenight]

Thanks everyone. I tested the voltage with and without load. Started at 119.6v and was 112.3v with the hair dryer on. I'll have to do the same test at someone elses house to see if there's a difference. Thanks again.

[Tom Horne, Electrician]

You should compare it to the load applied across the hot and the neutral at the same receptacle as you compared the load accross the hot and the ground.

[Rich256]

That drop sounds excessive to me. Where did you make the measurement? At the same outlet? A hair dryer should not change the voltage by more than a tenth of a volt or so.

How about at different outlets?

A measurement at the circuit breaker would be also in order to see if the drop is external to the house. A measurement on a different circuit with nothing turned on would also accomplish this. You could turn on the dryer and go around measuring at various outlets to see if any or all drop.

If you have aluminum wire it could be a poor connection in either the hot or return wires. That includes at the return buss in the breaker box.

[Chris Lewis]

That's a bit excessive, agreed. But, a 12A hair dryer on the end of a longish 14ga 15A circuit could easily pull down a circuit by a couple volts.

200' of 14ga is about .2 ohms. At 12A, that's 2.4V.

[Rich256]

But 7.3 volts (36A)? And are hair dryers over 1400 Watts? I really don't know.

I recall that once I noted that when an appliance turned on some lights would dim and others would get bright. I found that at times some lines were 110 and others were 130. Also true at the breaker box. Called the power company (quite surprised when their truck drove up in front of the house about 5 minutes later - just happened to be close by). They found that there was a burned return line in a main junction box - it was a big aluminum wire that they still use for main lines. I was probably using the ground rod at the meter for a return.