Need Advice on Electrical/Circuit Breaker Issue

[khardbored]

Came home from lunch and found that the lights in my bathroom & bedrooms were off, would not turn on. Went to circuit board and found that breaker #6 had tripped, so I reset it. This was around 3 PM.

Since then, large parts of my house have been behaving ... oddly. Mainly the Air Conditioner (which isn't even on the same circuit).

Issue #1: The HVAC unit has the fan on all the time, but it's barely going at 25% of it's normal spin (can tell by the noise it makes). The outside unit is fine, and seems to be producing plenty of "coldness." It's just not circulating well. If I turn on the basement lights, the fan on the AC ramps up. The more lights I turn on in the basement, the better the air circulates and I can get the fan up to about 75% of normal operation! Weird, huh?

Issue #2: The lights in the bathrooms are flickering, and the more "stuff" you turn on the worse they get. So in this case, like the exhaust fan takes power away from the lights and vice versa. (same breaker as the bedrooms, so this impacts my computer monitors too -- shut them off to not ruin them.)

No breakers have tripped since then.

I called MidAmerican and they sent a guy out, but he won't come inside, and will only check outside. He said he checked the box on my wall, the pole, and the underground transfer box, and all were fine. He said my house is getting power at something like 118 out of 120 "normal units" (of something...) so close to normal, and he said probably just too many people in the neighborhood using power.

I don't buy his explanation, as we've had way hotter days than this.


Please provide input or help me diagnose what's wrong!!!

thanks!

 

[BCClone]

If you are getting low wattage you need to turn something/s off. You can fry a lot of electrical stuff with partial voltage.

 

[Acylum]

That’s bizarre/scary. Does any part of your breaker box feel abnormally warm?

 

[ArgentCy]

Yeah, that's not good. Better call an electrician ASAP. Sounds like a potential short somewhere.

 

[Cyclonepride]

Yeah, that's not good. Better call an electrician ASAP. Sounds like a potential short somewhere.

Yeah, I had a circuit in my old house that was carrying way too much load. When it all went dead, I dug all over until I found that pretty much the first thing on the circuit (kitchen light) basically had the wires go poof (vaporized the insulation so nothing but blackened bare wires). Lucky it didn’t cause a fire because the area above it was completely inaccessible (I had to cut a hole in the upstairs bedroom wall, and then through the old roof (it was an addition).

 

[burn587]

Call an exorcist, your house has demons.

 

[Old87]

Call an electrician now! You either have a short or a loose ground problem. Either way, electrical issues can/will burn your house down. Call now, better to be safe than sorry.

 

[khardbored]

That’s bizarre/scary. Does any part of your breaker box feel abnormally warm?

No, it feels normal.

House built in 2004, for reference.

 

[khardbored]

Any recommendation on an electrician after hours?
EDIT: Found one.

 

[khardbored]

UPDATE: Electrician came. Within 10 minutes he diagnosed it. Basically when MidAmerican said everything was fine, they were wrong. I'm getting voltages ranging anywhere from 100 volts to 139 volts in various outlets, this means that the neutral line coming in to my house is damaged. In fact, turning on lights can swing it up to 30 V.

Calling Midamerican to come back and diagnose properly this time. Urgh.

 

[ISUAlum2002]

And just think, if MidAmerican had diagnosed their line correctly the first time, you wouldn't have a bill from an electrician. I'd ask MidAmerican to pay that bill.

 

[ArgentCy]

UPDATE: Electrician came. Within 10 minutes he diagnosed it. Basically when MidAmerican said everything was fine, they were wrong. I'm getting voltages ranging anywhere from 100 volts to 139 volts in various outlets, this means that the neutral line coming in to my house is damaged. In fact, turning on lights can swing it up to 30 V.

Calling Midamerican to come back and diagnose properly this time. Urgh.

Well that's very odd. About the only way I think that happens is for their transformer to have gone bad.

 

[khardbored]

Well that's very odd. About the only way I think that happens is for their transformer to have gone bad.

Yeah, the electrician that came out said either the transformer is slowly going bad, or the line itself is damaged or corroded, a connection is coming loose into the house, etc. I'm in a weird spot where only 3 houses are on a transformer and my house is at the "end of the line" so most opportunity for something to go wrong.

 

[ArgentCy]

I would also probably unplug any sensitive electronics as that can't be good for anything.

 

[khardbored]

And just think, if MidAmerican had diagnosed their line correctly the first time, you wouldn't have a bill from an electrician. I'd ask MidAmerican to pay that bill.

Me: "I feel that you should be responsible for my payment to have an electrician come out. Since you didn't evaluate the issue correctly the first time."

MidAmerican:

 

[ArgentCy]

Yeah, the electrician that came out said either the transformer is slowly going bad, or the line itself is damaged or corroded, a connection is coming loose into the house, etc. I'm in a weird spot where only 3 houses are on a transformer and my house is at the "end of the line" so most opportunity for something to go wrong.

We had a weird problem a year or two ago as we live in the middle of nowhere. Basically every night the power would briefly go out. Just long enough to turn off computers and reset the clocks. You could almost set a clock to the outage as I think it was always about 9 pm. Finally had talked with an electrician and he said it was something on the power line that would test for outages, forget the exact term.

 

[ArgentCy]

Me: "I feel that you should be responsible for my payment to have an electrician come out. Since you didn't evaluate the issue correctly the first time."

MidAmerican:

Could be worse. You could be talking to Alliant Energy.

 

[ISUAlum2002]

Me: "I feel that you should be responsible for my payment to have an electrician come out. Since you didn't evaluate the issue correctly the first time."

MidAmerican:

Bahaha. I realize they'll fight back on it initially but if the problem truly is on their side of the line and nothing you or your house did caused the issue, that's their responsibility and they should have figured it out the first time. It's why you pay their crazy ass "basic service" fees. If their customer service area tells you to pound sand, write a letter to their complaints area. If they don't do anything, write a letter to the AG's office. Putting these complaints in writing will get the job done - they're a heavily regulated utility.

 

[ArgentCy]

Bahaha. I realize they'll fight back on it initially but if the problem truly is on their side of the line and nothing you or your house did caused the issue, that's their responsibility and they should have figured it out the first time. It's why you pay their crazy ass "basic service" fees. If their customer service area tells you to pound sand, write a letter to their complaints area. If they don't do anything, write a letter to the AG's office. Putting these complaints in writing will get the job done - they're a heavily regulated utility.

Just depends on whether the $100 or so is worth the trouble. Regardless, for electrical issues you want to be sure because I've seen plenty of house fires caused by electrical lines.

 

[khardbored]

Update: MidAmerican came back about 10:00 PM -- 2 guys this time (not the same guy). Found a corroded neutral wire in their access box in the ground that wasn't fully seated. Easy fix. Only took 15 minutes to fix. But the issue was in their box.

They asked "so ... there was a MidAmerican guy here earlier today?" I said yes. Response? "Doesn't surprise me." (they knew who it was). Later, "We fix a lot of his work."

- Glad it was an easy fix. Everything is working normally now.
- I will contact MidAmerican and complain that I had to pay almost $100 due to their error. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

Thanks for the responses!