Power trouble - bad breaker?

[chopnhack]

Wow, if they are going off for an extended period of time then coming back on, you may have some serious arcing and heating of wiring going on...do yourself a favor and turn off that breaker until you either find it yourself or call in an electrician....before a fire starts!

[eezlock]

power trouble- bad breaker?

Al, I think Daryl is on the right track by talking to the power company.
It sounds like they are having trouble with the circuit in your neighborhood
and are experincing a voltage drop somewhere. I would ask to talk to a
supervisor in the distribution dept. tell him what is happening and how regular it occurs. Ask him if they can temporarily install a recording graph type meter
on you service panel that will record all incoming voltages, their peak highs and low's. This will tell them if the problem is in their incoming lines to your house.

If you have regular significant voltage drops in your service...it could damage
your sensitive electronic equipment and cause it to burn up prematurely.

[iceman61]

If you are just having problems in a just few places in your house then the problem is not with the power company, it is in your house. Since the problem is not in all of your rooms, I would think it would not be the main breaker but probably within the circuit for those rooms specifically.

I ran into a similar situation at my girlfriend's house last month. The lights in 2 of her rooms would go out and come back on intermittently. Thinking it was a bad breaker I went to the breaker box & found that the breaker had a little bit of wobble. It had snapped off the rail on one end. The breaker in this situation snaps onto the power rail from the front. (the power rail is behind the breakers) I placed my thumbs on both ends of the breaker & pushed the breaker back into place. Problem solved in my situation.

This may or may not be your problem, but if it is, it will save you a service call from an electrician.

[wackii]

Problem solved

Thank you all. The electrician did come over and took care of my power problem. I do have home warranty for the first year so the power is covered I called them and they sent an electrician guy over for $60 deductible... not bad... It was my main breaker causing it. The guy said that the main breaker is iffy... It was dirty and had some corrosion or rust... The main breaker is a 2 pole 100 amp circuit breaker. He said one of the pole was dirty, corroded/rusted and did not have good connection. That explained why some rooms powers are out while the others are fine. He checked all other breakers and everything was fine. So he popped out the main breaker and sprayed some electrical contact cleaner then wiped everything off clean... Popped back in the main breaker and it runs fine now... No flickering lights... no power off by itself... I'm so glad that everybody is safe and things run like normal now... knock on wood

I hope someone can find this info useful if that ever happens to them.

Thanks again.

Al,

[cabinetman]

Thank you all. The electrician did come over and took care of my power problem. I do have home warranty for the first year so the power is covered I called them and they sent an electrician guy over for $60 deductible... not bad... It was my main breaker causing it. The guy said that the main breaker is iffy... It was dirty and had some corrosion or rust... The main breaker is a 2 pole 100 amp circuit breaker. He said one of the pole was dirty, corroded/rusted and did not have good connection. That explained why some rooms powers are out while the others are fine. He checked all other breakers and everything was fine. So he popped out the main breaker and sprayed some electrical contact cleaner then wiped everything off clean... Popped back in the main breaker and it runs fine now... No flickering lights... no power off by itself... I'm so glad that everybody is safe and things run like normal now... knock on wood

I hope someone can find this info useful if that ever happens to them.

Thanks again.

Al,

That had to be a relief. Kind of an oddity for a house that new.
.