Electricity- flickering, brief outage

[Steve Daniels]

On Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:34:33 -0400, against all advice, something compelled "gore" , to say:

It's hard to fix something when it's working.

[Ray]

I have a black-colored 100-AMP double pole main circuit breaker, manufactured by "Murray Mfg. Corp."

It's about L:2.5" W:2" H: 3"

[RBM]

I have a black-colored 100-AMP double pole main circuit breaker, manufactured by "Murray Mfg. Corp."

It's about L:2.5" W:2" H: 3"

I had an incident with a Murray 150 amp main breaker that went bad. It was a similar situation to yours, and I couldn't find the fault. I had the utility company come out (NYSEG) and check the transformer connections and everything was good. The only thing I hadn't inspected was the main breaker, and only because it was cool to the touch. I've seen plenty of breakers burn up internally, but when this happens, they're always hot. Once I pulled the breaker, it was obvious that a bad connection with the panel buss annealed the buss metal and caused the flickering. Your particular main breaker is much smaller, so I'm sure it would have heated up noticeably, if it was the problem

[Ray]

Thank you for the information.

How did you treat the annealed buss metal?

One time when I noticed flickering, I went to the circuit breaker box and touched all the breakers, but did not notice any heat.

[RBM]

Thank you for the information.

How did you treat the annealed buss metal?

One time when I noticed flickering, I went to the circuit breaker box and touched all the breakers, but did not notice any heat.

The time to check for this is when the flickering is occurring. If the bad connection is in the main breaker, touching your palm to the breaker should reveal the heat. You may also smell an acrid aroma, and hear hissing or sizzling. Of course none of this will show up until the breaker is really toast. If you remove the panel cover and expose the breaker, a visual check of the sides of the breaker may reveal discoloration or charring of the plastic. Most often when I've seen the style of breaker you have, go bad, it'll burn a hole through the side of the breaker. The buss was destroyed in the panel I described. I replaced the entire panel and breakers. I'll link pictures of the front of the breaker, which looks fine, the back of the breaker, where you can see one connection is copper colored, and the other is gray from overheating, and a picture of the section of annealed buss in the panel

[sym]

i as an electrician appreciate any info i might get from my customer,cant tell you how many times something they say can lead you right to the problem. after my previous post i went on a service call, found a bad connection at the service,i replaced all 3 connections although only 1 was bad seems to of taken care of it. but it was all the same symptoms you described.

[Ray]

My electrician was just here today and pulled Con Edison's meter and tightened up connections in the box and applied some conductor termination compound to the contacts where the meter plugs in. There was no sign or arcing or corroded contacts in the electric meter. Also, he pulled all the circuit breakers in the breaker box and inspected the buss bars and all metal contacts. No sign of arcing, annealing of metals, corrosion, no cracked or broken buss bars. All connections tightened.

The lock on the electric meter was rusted shut, so a Con Ed tech stopped by the other day and cut it off. That was the only corrosion noticed with the meter.

[Misterchas]

Turns out the problem was with Con Edison. They pulled the electric meter and did a load test and determined there was a "bad neutral" under ground in the street.

They pulled a metal cover out of the street and had to pump out a few gallons of water before getting to the wiring.

I called Con Edison several times over a few months before they sent someone. I informed them that I hired an licensed electrician and had him check my circuit breaker box and the connections at Con Edison's electric meter.

[sligoNoSPAMjoe]

Do you have aluminum wiring in the house? Have devices been wired using the back stab method or the much more reliable screw method?

Do all the circuits do this at once or do only some circuits loose power?