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TacoHavoc posted:What kind of switch is controlling the fixture? If it's a dimmer you may have a compatibility issue. It's just a standard on/off switch, no dimmer.
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Jul 23, 2020 04:41
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My first thought was induced voltage, but I wasn't sure if you can even have enough induced voltage for an LED light, and apparently you can! https://lamphq.com/led-lights-glow/ Another issue could be a switched neutral.
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Jul 23, 2020 04:53
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SpartanIvy posted:My first thought was induced voltage, but I wasn't sure if you can even have enough induced voltage for an LED light, and apparently you can! Huh I've noticed the led glow in my bathroom for a time now. One of the things mentioned in that article is for multiple switches controlling the same circuit which for some reason my bathroom has even though the switches are like 3 feet apart though anything connecting the two has to at minimum go over a door frame. You can't even open both of the doors all the way without them hitting each other. Would induction be a reasonable explanation for that case? I'm having a hard time picturing why it would be, but I haven't done much with wiring since high school. Is it the two wires that are connecting two spdt switches, and when it's supposed to be off one wire is inducing current in the other? gwrtheyrn fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jul 23, 2020 |
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Jul 23, 2020 05:16
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I have a theory about this. Cheap LEDs use capacitive droppers to lower the effective AC voltage. Capacitors are great high-pass filters, so they are really efficient at coupling all the high-harmonic noise from every switch-mode power supply in the house directly into the LEDs. The classical "induced voltage" isn't sufficent to describe what's going on, because almost any multimeter (except for power analyzer meters) won't be able to detect the high-harmonic noise as voltage. I have more ideas about this, but don't feel like rambling. If anyone wants to hear about them, I'll make an effortpost later.
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Jul 23, 2020 11:27
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Don’t a lot of LED and/or fluorescent bulbs have a scintillating layer or something? It glows for a little bit after the light is off. Make sure that’s not what you’re seeing before you go crazy chasing ghostly electrons. Or the caps just drain or something. I dunno.
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Jul 24, 2020 01:55
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angryrobots posted:A 220v stove with an open leg won't be slow - it won't work at all. Late to the party, but It Depends. It may be able to backfeed through enough stuff on the other leg to the neutral for that stuff to work a bit. Depends how much other stuff is turned on. It's Generally Bad News Bears for any electronics on that leg.
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Jul 26, 2020 20:57
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STR posted:Late to the party, but It Depends. It may be able to backfeed through enough stuff on the other leg to the neutral for that stuff to work a bit. Depends how much other stuff is turned on. Yeah, if you turn your stove on and suddenly the nonworking stuff "sorta works" you lost a neutral and you are now in the process of melting down every transformer-based power supply on whichever leg is at 170V and blowing the front ends off of every switch-mode supply on the 70V leg. In short, no modern electronics survive.
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Jul 28, 2020 01:37
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Yeah, if you turn your stove on and suddenly the nonworking stuff "sorta works" you lost a neutral and you are now in the process of melting down every transformer-based power supply on whichever leg is at 170V and blowing the front ends off of every switch-mode supply on the 70V leg. In short, no modern electronics survive. That's also true, but not what STR is saying. He's meaning that if you lost a 120v hot leg on the utility side (or anywhere upstream feeding a panel with the 240v stove and other 120v circuits), the stove won't get 240v, but it could get ~some voltage~ via the bus bar that is missing it's leg, being connected to 120v circuits with devices plugged in and competing the circuit to neutral. So the stove circuit is being completed, but to neutral though whatever is plugged in. In practice, most of the time when we deal with a partial power voltage complaint, asking "Does your stove or dryer work?" (assuming they are electric which most are, here) will reliably suss out whether they possibly have utility half-power (which we need to go deal with) or a problem on their side (ie- they have the receptacles in one bedroom out. You need to check your breakers and/or call an electrician). I'm not saying he's wrong, cause he isn't, but I've not personally had a complaint of damaged electronics in a case like that, or had someone tell me their stove was "kinda working" when they had a completely open hot leg (I have heard that, when it wasn't completely open but just a bad connection causing voltage on one leg to sag with load). Though generally I don't enter a residence and I'm definitely not checking voltage at the stove. Lots of smoked electronics from open neutrals, as you described.
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Jul 28, 2020 02:50
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My electric outlets have the GFCI sticker on it, but no test or reset button. Does this mean the GFCI is at the breaker level? Is there a reason to switch them out for ones with the button? They're a bit yellowed with age, so I need to update them all to begin with.
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Jul 28, 2020 14:40
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Bioshuffle posted:My electric outlets have the GFCI sticker on it, but no test or reset button. Does this mean the GFCI is at the breaker level? Is there a reason to switch them out for ones with the button? They're a bit yellowed with age, so I need to update them all to begin with. Usually it means they are chained off of a GFCI outlet somewhere upstream. If you don't have any GFCI outlets anywhere, it could be a breaker. Or it could be that there used to be a GFCI outlet and they removed it but left the sticker.
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Jul 28, 2020 14:42
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Buy one of these plug-in testers and plug it in and push the test button. If the power cuts they’re on a GFCI upstream. If it doesn’t, the sticker is lying or the GFCI has failed. GFCIs will always have a test button on them but they can protect downstream outlets that don’t have integrated GFCIs which is where those stickers come in. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RUL2UU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1gdiFbRFY6HWA
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Jul 28, 2020 15:13
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I remember reading about the fiasco behind the thread title. I received an email from a homeowner yesterday that they get a shock when they touch their siding in the back of their house. I told him that's an issue. He has not gotten back to me.
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Jul 28, 2020 18:45
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You never came out, and now I'm dead. Thanks, jerk.
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Jul 28, 2020 19:51
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Problem got worse, now entire house is a Faraday cage. No Wifi or cell signal can penetrate aluminum death box. Trapped inside, homeowner starves to death trying to find breaker panel hidden behind drywall.
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Jul 28, 2020 22:24
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More previous homeowner fuckery: 2 switches in a double-gang box. One switch is for overhead room lighting, second switch is for light outside by the door. Instead of pigtailing the black, he had the wire go from the interior light switch, removed some of the casing, looped it, and kept the same cable going and terminated it on the outdoor lighting switch  Also the interior switch was a 3 way that he set up to only be a single pole. Like what the absolute gently caress.
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Jul 29, 2020 19:05
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KKKLIP ART posted:More previous homeowner fuckery: You can't say this and not post a picture. It's against the rules of common decency.
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Jul 29, 2020 19:43
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KKKLIP ART posted:2 switches in a double-gang box. One switch is for overhead room lighting, second switch is for light outside by the door. Instead of pigtailing the black, he had the wire go from the interior light switch, removed some of the casing, looped it, and kept the same cable going and terminated it on the outdoor lighting switch That's a crusty old electrician trick. I've seen those single-lamp holders (the $2 ones) wired inline where the NM cable has the sheath removed in its middle and the individual wires' insulation removed just enough to spread and connect on the fixture's terminals without any break in the wires. It's not against code AFAICT, but it seems like it would take more time to get the surgical cuts correct than just wirenutting a pigtail. My least favorite crusty old electrician trick that is now against code is twisting the grounds 8000 times with no crimp/nut, cutting them pretty short, and jamming them way back in the box.
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Jul 29, 2020 20:20
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I found that exact "trick" in my current place a few weeks back.
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Jul 29, 2020 20:55
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H110Hawk posted:You can't say this and not post a picture. It's against the rules of common decency. Sadly I didn’t take a picture of the midway cut in the cable, it just looks like 2 wires going into the switch.
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Jul 29, 2020 20:58
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Yeah, I wasn't aware that was considered strange. I've seen that done a fair bit in my area. It's always sort of annoying to deal with though, to be sure.
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Jul 29, 2020 21:20
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Found a few of those in my house too.
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Jul 29, 2020 22:10
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Has anyone found a properly executed Western Union splice in the wild that wasn't knob & tube?
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Jul 29, 2020 22:15
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shame on an IGA posted:Has anyone found a properly executed Western Union splice in the wild that wasn't knob & tube? Lineman do them all the time around this area. I was in a jersey shore rental on the second floor deck and was compelled to take a picture of one that was right in front of me just off the pole. I've got another electrician buddy working for Amtrak and he and his crew used them all the time. I've done them on dc stuff multiple times when necessary. But outside of those kind of situations I'm not sure where they're needed/required anymore? Most of the dc flying splices I see are clamped. And i get it, that's just faster. But I'm the guy who has waxed twine in my bag and knows how to cable lace so.........
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Jul 29, 2020 22:20
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They still get used where you have lovely old aerial copper that's in too poor of condition to use a tension sleeve (or the lineman didn't have one that day). Maybe other types of conductor too, for the same reason, but my experience is with aggravating old 6/8a copper.
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Jul 29, 2020 22:44
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angryrobots posted:They still get used where you have lovely old aerial copper that's in too poor of condition to use a tension sleeve (or the lineman didn't have one that day). I think this gets passed by particularly near the ocean because the tension sleeve is gonna rot out just like everything else and slip, where the WU splice will likely last a lot longer.
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Jul 29, 2020 23:08
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I wouldn't doubt that a bit, I've heard that the ocean creates a lot of issues close to the coasts. Like, every so often in some places they have to spray off the insulators cause they'll start tracking over from salt contamination.
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Jul 29, 2020 23:15
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This is definitely in the scary questions category, and I think the bottom line is that I should probably chuck the entire electrical part of the unit before my house burns down but uh... Here goes. I got one of those tiny micro lathes recently, used from a gentleman on craigslist, who was selling it on behalf of his (presumably dead) father. Everything was going swimmingly until I made the mistake, at some point, of having my hands placed on the motor controls and chuck simultaneously, when I felt a shock. After a little bit of further investigation I discovered, to much horror, that the SPST rocker on/off switch on the motor speed controller had 120 VAC relative to ground going through the actual toggle on the outside of the controller. So now I am sort of wondering what happened to the previous owner. Like I said, I'm probably gonna trash the entire controller and possibly the motor for good measure just because gently caress that, but I opened up the controller out of curiosity. Nothing seemed obviously burned out, but I tested the resistance between the rocker switch toggle and the point where it was soldered to the pcb. The resistance would initially read ~10 mOhm but would drop, like the meter was charging an inductor (???) in the circuit or something. Regardless, there is not supposed to be any kind of continuity between a switch toggle and its contacts, so this is probably a short in the switch, right? Or was this some kind of botched wiring job by the PO?
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Jul 30, 2020 22:48
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I am having no fun at all finding the gfci for my outdoor power plugs. I unplugged a pump today and lost power at the point. Checked breakers, nothing amiss. Flipped them all anyway. Found another outdoor socket set and it is dead too. I've hit all the known gfcis in the kitchen, bathroom, and I have one in the garage to see if they're on the same circuit but no. I really don't want to spend $20 for a tracer just to push a button, but I'm probably going to have to, arent I?
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Jul 31, 2020 05:38
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Possibly stupid electrical question, but what's the safest way to remove an outlet when you have zero idea what it's attached to? In the course of doing some yardwork, I ran across an outlet in the back yard (it's inside a plastic enclosure) that's clearly been there for a long time, and we have zero clue what it might be hooked to, other than the wiring is buried. The outlets themselves are dead (there's no GCFI), but none of the breakers in the house are labeled for it, and none of them seem to have any effect on the outlet. We know that some previous owners (and whoever built the place in the early 70's) half-assed a fair bit of electrical stuff, so I'm not completely convinced the wiring doesn't run into the neighboring property or something odd like that.
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Jul 31, 2020 07:35
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pumped up for school posted:I am having no fun at all finding the gfci for my outdoor power plugs. I unplugged a pump today and lost power at the point. Checked breakers, nothing amiss. Flipped them all anyway. Found another outdoor socket set and it is dead too. I'm surprised it wasn't the one in the garage. That's what all my outdoor outlets are connected to. Maybe try the attic or crawl space? Do you have a basement it could be in? Did you check if the other garage outlets were working at all, or did you just reset the GFCI?
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Jul 31, 2020 11:51
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pumped up for school posted:I am having no fun at all finding the gfci for my outdoor power plugs. I unplugged a pump today and lost power at the point. Checked breakers, nothing amiss. Flipped them all anyway. Found another outdoor socket set and it is dead too. In my prior apartment, it was the one outlet in the garage. In the current house, there's a GFCI breaker under the breaker panel (which is with the water softener) and that's the one for half the basement and the outdoor sockets.
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Jul 31, 2020 13:20
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B-Nasty posted:It's not against code AFAICT, but it seems like it would take more time to get the surgical cuts correct than just wirenutting a pigtail. I'm late but there's nothing surgical about it. You leave the wire long, use your wire strippers back where you want the exposed bit and slide the insulation off a little bit, then use your wire strippers again on the end. It's really really fast, faster than making pigtails. It seemed like the obvious way to do multiple outlets or switches in a box when I was new. I haven't done this in years since my boss caught me and yelled at me to knock it off but it's not hard to do. Mimesweeper fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jul 31, 2020 |
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Jul 31, 2020 15:55
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azflyboy posted:Possibly stupid electrical question, but what's the safest way to remove an outlet when you have zero idea what it's attached to? How did you check that the box wasn't powered? I'd (carefully) take the outlet out of the box and confirm at the wires that it's not energized. You best bet for checking what it's attached to would be to check the color of the sheathing. If you're lucky, that UF will be a different color than the NM in your house. Then you can check in the next closest boxes.
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Jul 31, 2020 17:12
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kid sinister posted:How did you check that the box wasn't powered? I'd (carefully) take the outlet out of the box and confirm at the wires that it's not energized. In case this isn't something the above poster knows how to do: You need a non-contact voltage detector. Wave it around a known hot outlet to figure out how it works, then go to your dead outlet and verify it's actually dead. Alternatively you can use a multimeter set to AC Volts. Meter H/N, H/G, and N/G. Should be nearly 0v, and it accounts for mis-wires like H/N reversed on the outlet.
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Jul 31, 2020 17:23
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Alarbus posted:In the current house, there's a GFCI breaker under the breaker panel (which is with the water softener) and that's the one for half the basement and the outdoor sockets. There's a second "locked" panel under the meter.  I don't mind cutting that if you don't think that's "STAY AWAY FROM THIS STUPID NEWBIE" DaveSauce posted:I'm surprised it wasn't the one in the garage. That's what all my outdoor outlets are connected to. Busted! I only tried one outlet in the garage (the one w/ the GFCI) and it worked. This morning I checked 2 other outlets in the garage and they're out, too. I pulled the panel cover and checked the breaker.  The one I have flagged is the one I was hoping was the culprit (labeled "F Gar", assuming Front Garage and I can't find it powering anything. As opposed to "B Gar" which covered the outlets for the rear of garage, and "Gar" which killed the overhead lights). It is showing 120V. Every breaker is showing 120V. So... still looking like a lost GFCI? I'm really hoping not in the crawlspace or attic. That's where the monsters live.
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Jul 31, 2020 17:36
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Mimesweeper posted:I'm late but there's nothing surgical about it. You leave the wire long, use your wire strippers back where you want the exposed bit and slide the insulation off a little bit, then use your wire strippers again on the end. It's really really fast, faster than making pigtails. It seemed like the obvious way to do multiple outlets or switches in a box when I was new. That's fine if your desired exposed wire section is near enough to the end of the wire to slide the remaining insulation over, but I've seen it done where the NM sheath picks back up and continues on some distance to the next box. I assume the technique for that was a stripper on both sides of the wire, and a small slice on top to peal/unwrap the insulation away like a taco shell.
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Jul 31, 2020 17:37
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I've been sitting through arc flash training for the past two days. I just have to replace a few words with 'motorcycle' and/or 'firearm' and poo poo stays the same. Wear your gear, know what the gently caress you're doing, trust no one, treat as always live until confirmed, etc.
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Jul 31, 2020 17:52
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About a month ago I posted about how I had put in decora outlets and everything worked fine until I got to the bedroom. I had the electrician over, and it turns out the issue was that one of the outlets (that was currently working) had an additional black and white wire that needed to be either ponytailed or stabbed in the pack. So he did the first. Since I had him over already he went and also checked all the other outlets that I did and said they looked good. And also removed a light and fan/light combo that I want to replace. $190 for two hours, pretty good! And he talked about his dogs and liked my dog so 10/10 would use again. he also said that doing stabs is basically cheap poo poo that no one should do, which I can understand. Quite a few of them in the bedroom weren't even fully held in place. I'm amazed that they all stayed working.
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Jul 31, 2020 19:17
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movax posted:I've been sitting through arc flash training for the past two days. I just have to replace a few words with 'motorcycle' and/or 'firearm' and poo poo stays the same. Wear your gear, know what the gently caress you're doing, trust no one, treat as always live until confirmed, etc. do they show any 'if you gently caress up heres what will happen' videos there? our refresher guy who comes by every few years likes to show one about an HV team in Russia or somewhere who had an arc fault start a fire in a power transformer and they tried to put out the flames by shovelling snow on it.
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Jul 31, 2020 19:42
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kecske posted:they tried to put out the flames by shovelling snow on it. Random aside: The yellow edges of these boxes are removable lithium-ion batteries.  We had a freak accident right on top of one of these, which cracked the case and started burning. At first we just cleared a firebreak and watched it burn. Then the guys got bored and started dumping snow (there was a little) and dirt on it. Watching dirt burn / melt / fuse was cool. Then the shovel ended up on fire. Eventually someone made it over with the giant yellow extinguisher and put the fun out.
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Jul 31, 2020 19:54
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