New place, voltage in HT room is too low!!

[Geno]

One thing to keep in mind is that this kind of voltage drop with a fairly small load is probably due to insufficient current capacity in that circuit. Looks like you're on the right path with poor connections somewhere in the circuit. I'd also look at the breaker for that particular branch. I've seen breakers cause that kind of problem.

 

[philh]

Find the first plug in the daisy chain, disconnect the lines leading to number 2 and plug a load into the first plug, measuring voltage drop. do that in sequence for each plug. I'd bet you have a bad wire between two plugs.

I know this from experience, my ex-wife got zapped washing an outdoor light fixture {maybe I should have upped the voltage?}. Anyway, found a partial short between hot and ground between plug 1 & 2, probably from a wire staple. The short was not enough to trip the breaker, and only tested at 30V(from memory), but it was enough to get her attention.

 

[j_garcia]

I mapped out the circuits last night and found that it probably isn't bad connections. One of the circuits has only 5-6 outlets and a couple of lights on it, and it exhibits the same issue as the first one, which has about 12-15 connections on it. The room that I chose not to use for the theater has TWO 20A breakers in it...but since they are doing construction, I can't really check those two circuits for sag yet. That room has hardwood floors and the kitchen and pretty much no good locations for the system...

The short was my first thought too, but the fact that two separate circuits behave exactly the same thing leads me to believe that isn't it, however it could be that both have the same problem... Wire AWG could be an issue too, though. My friend is going to bring in an infrared device that he can use to see if the outlets themselves are generating heat, indicating abnormally high resistance or something to that effect. I replaced 6 outlets last night in one circuit and it appeared to make no difference at all, but then that was only about half of all of them. I've found what appear to be the first and last outlets in this circuit and replaced both. Tonight I am going to tackle the second circuit that has fewer outlets and see if replacing all of them does anything for me. The thought that the breakers themselves might be bad is another one that we've been pondering.

 

[Rickster71]

Hi J Garcia,
The power Co. must supply voltage within a certain range.

Have your electrician friend check the voltage at the main lugs of your panel. (By checking at the main lugs, you are checking 'before' any in house wiring.)
Then, have him make up a pigtail with a female plug end, and connect it to, or as close as possible to the main lugs. Plug in the space heater. If you still get a voltage drop as low as 100V (or did you say 90V??) That's too low. Call your power Co.

With a voltage drop that low, (at the lugs) it sounds like the transformer at the pole. IMHO
Good Luck, Rick

 

[j_garcia]

Power company says it sounds like a wiring issue, which would not be their responsibility, but they are going to come do a safety check anyway.

 

[Rickster71]

Power company says it sounds like a wiring issue, which would not be their responsibility, but they are going to come do a safety check anyway.

"The problem is your wiring, not their's"
That's the standard reply from most utility Co.'s
The wiring from the meter to the street is their responsibility.
That's why I sugguested to check the main lugs in the panel. It checks only the feed coming in; and isolates the rest of the house.

 

[j_garcia]

Their testing said the feed at the street was 122V, and at the main was 118V, which he said was good. We got 118 at the panel also when tested the other day, so it is either something at the panel itself (bad breakers?) or in the wiring from the panel to the rest of the house.... Still investigating.

 

[audiohead01]

This is just something I will throw out there since I have seen it only once, get your electrician friend to check the connections from the meter to the panel, on the meter side there should be deox to keep the connections from building oxidation on them (NEC code). Same on the main connect side make sure the lugs are clean no oxidation, you can by the stuff at home depot, lowes etc.. in the electrical isle. works great for car / mower batteries too!
You will get to the bottom of this one.

 

[Duettadude]

Their testing said the feed at the street was 122V, and at the main was 118V, which he said was good. We got 118 at the panel also when tested the other day, so it is either something at the panel itself (bad breakers?) or in the wiring from the panel to the rest of the house.... Still investigating.

I noticed that the age of your home is 30 years? If so, you might be running into the same problem I had in my home (same age). Check the "prongs" (lugs) in the breaker panel that the breakers slide over when they are installed. In my house the corrosion was bad enough to cause brown-out-like problems in some rooms. I actually went (with the service OFF) and removed the breakers and cleaned up the lugs that the breakers connect to. Many were corroded. I then installed new breakers (with anti-corrosion gel) and solved the problem.

 

[audiohead01]

Deox is great stuff...

 

[j_garcia]

I noticed that the age of your home is 30 years? If so, you might be running into the same problem I had in my home (same age). Check the "prongs" (lugs) in the breaker panel that the breakers slide over when they are installed. In my house the corrosion was bad enough to cause brown-out-like problems in some rooms. I actually went (with the service OFF) and removed the breakers and cleaned up the lugs that the breakers connect to. Many were corroded. I then installed new breakers (with anti-corrosion gel) and solved the problem.

That sounds like what is going on here. We pulled the panel off and everything looked OK to him, but we have not pulled breakers yet to see what condition they are in.

I will also check the condition of the lugs at the meter.

 

[GreenJelly]

I had a simular problem... My $150,000 speakers weighed over 500 pounds. I set up my system in my small (but spaceous) appartment and went to work...

I came home to a whole in the floor....

DOH!

Mike


Ok, back to reality, you could try getting a big UPS between the wall and the computer. Thats assuming their is enough amps to make up for the drop in voltage. Then connect your line conditioner to the UPS (UPS are not good lineconditioners). Your friend should be able to read the amps or watts coming out... then you could avoid the above issue.

The worst thing that could happen is that you have to return the UPS cause it keeps beeping (meaning its running out of juice)... this will set you back, you will want more then 1500va for your whole system including the amp... That level isnt inexpensive.

 

[philh]

I mapped out the circuits last night and found that it probably isn't bad connections. One of the circuits has only 5-6 outlets and a couple of lights on it, and it exhibits the same issue as the first one, which has about 12-15 connections on it. The room that I chose not to use for the theater has TWO 20A breakers in it...but since they are doing construction, I can't really check those two circuits for sag yet. That room has hardwood floors and the kitchen and pretty much no good locations for the system...

The short was my first thought too, but the fact that two separate circuits behave exactly the same thing leads me to believe that isn't it, however it could be that both have the same problem... Wire AWG could be an issue too, though. My friend is going to bring in an infrared device that he can use to see if the outlets themselves are generating heat, indicating abnormally high resistance or something to that effect. I replaced 6 outlets last night in one circuit and it appeared to make no difference at all, but then that was only about half of all of them. I've found what appear to be the first and last outlets in this circuit and replaced both. Tonight I am going to tackle the second circuit that has fewer outlets and see if replacing all of them does anything for me. The thought that the breakers themselves might be bad is another one that we've been pondering.

The advice to plug the space heater in near the panel and measure the lug voltage is a good one. Something is causing that huge power drop, and a little space heater ain't it.

 

[mtrycrafts]

The box is in the garage and the outlets are only about 20ft-25ft away.

A 10A draw on a 14ga wire 25ft long, 50ft total wire would give about a 1.3V drop
14ga is the smallest 120V wire by code in a house. So, it is not the wires either.
I had a friend who had issues and it turned out that one of the incoming wires from the power company at the head was not making proper connection or corroded or something, forgot. The cable was replaced, problem gone.

 

[hemiram]

This is just something I will throw out there since I have seen it only once, get your electrician friend to check the connections from the meter to the panel, on the meter side there should be deox to keep the connections from building oxidation on them (NEC code). Same on the main connect side make sure the lugs are clean no oxidation, you can by the stuff at home depot, lowes etc.. in the electrical isle. works great for car / mower batteries too!
You will get to the bottom of this one.

In the house we live in now, the voltage runs on the high side, at least 125 volts most of the time. When we bought the house, the only electrical concerns I had was that some of the outlets were really loose, they didn't hold plugs very well. I replaced all of these very soon after we moved in. The other thing I didn't like was the small 100 amp breaker box it had. Not a huge deal either, but something to upgrade later on.

A few years after we moved in, the breaker for the A/C start tripping one day. I reset it a couple of times and finally called a friend of ours, an electrician who rewired one of our rental buildings. By the time he had arrived, I had reset the breaker several more times, and one of the wires from the meter to the breaker box was smoking! When my friend got there, he turned off the power, and after the hot wire cooled off a little, he said, "I think I know what the problem is", and pulled out his knife and scraped the crunchy insulation off the hot wire, and it was aluminum! The builder tried to save a few bucks by running aluminum wire for the whole 4 feet from the meter to the breaker box. We had to really muscle the wires out of the conduit, all 3 wire's insulation had melted togeter right where they came through the wall. He replaced the wires, and the A/C breaker, but told us that the breakers for it were not made any longer, and we were running at the upper limit of 100 amps a lot of the time, and needed to upgrade the service ASAP. We didn't have the cash, so he tightend everything up, and
we told him we would call him in a month or so. About 6 weeks later, we had forgotten about it, but the breaker box reminded us anyway, by having another breaker fail. It tunred out that when he had tightened the new wires in previously, he had unknowingly cracked the ground clamp. It had arced over and gotten very hot and caused the popped breaker to fail. We had the money then, so he replaced the box and also ran 12 ga wires from the box to my room where I have a lot of old radios and have my TV in today. These upgrades stopped all the dimming of lights and slowdowns of fans, etc, that using almost any larger appliance did, and have come in handy to power my HT.

 

[j_garcia]

Another update after a long weekend of around the house work. On the circiut I am using, I replaced every outlet. As is usually the case, the final one I did was the bad one - the hot wire was completely corroded and clearly heating up as the insulation was hard and cracked as was the electrical tape around the crimp connector. Once this outlet was rewired, no more sag on the circuit!! The other circuit in the room has the same problem however, but at least I now know that there is a HIGH probability that this circuit has the same issue and I just need to find it. Did a little movie watching this weekend....still no surround yet, only setup in 3.1 because there is nowhere to put the surrounds at the moment, but I was still quite a happy camper to say the least (not to mention my high speed internet stuff showed up and the kitchen was also completed...woo hoo).

 

[GreenJelly]

A 10A draw on a 14ga wire 25ft long, 50ft total wire would give about a 1.3V drop
14ga is the smallest 120V wire by code in a house. So, it is not the wires either.
I had a friend who had issues and it turned out that one of the incoming wires from the power company at the head was not making proper connection or corroded or something, forgot. The cable was replaced, problem gone.

The 10 amp drop is based on DC current and not AC current.... I think...

I can find out for sure... I will check, I got a EE (with a masters) for a Father.

Mike

 

[Havelcek]

I had a similar problem in my house (built 1960ish) and I had to have an electrician come in and replace the whole panel (was an original Federal-Pacific) with 220 service and run a brand new circuit to the outlet where I plug in my A/V stuff...now I get a 119.7 on the power conditioner on that outlet.

 

[j_garcia]

"I think I know what the problem is", and pulled out his knife and scraped the crunchy insulation off the hot wire, and it was aluminum! The builder tried to save a few bucks by running aluminum wire for the whole 4 feet from the meter to the breaker box.

Actually, my electrician friend said aluminum isn't the best for this, but it isn't bad either, nor is it uncommon. He said aluminum from the main to the panel is fine, providing it is of sufficient AWG. The panel is old enough that it lists AWG for using copper vs aluminum, with aluminum requiring a larger size.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Actually, my electrician friend said aluminum isn't the best for this, but it isn't bad either, nor is it uncommon. He said aluminum from the main to the panel is fine, providing it is of sufficient AWG. The panel is old enough that it lists AWG for using copper vs aluminum, with aluminum requiring a larger size.

The only drawback to aluminum is that dissimilar metal but the cream usually helps. The code allows for this and the wire ga is several size larger. When you look at the $$ difference with CU and AL at the 0ga or bigger, it is not cheap, especially if you have a long run. Besides, the power company usually uses AL to the homes.