Circuit Breaker Safety

blujax01

blujax01

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I am building a reloading room in the basement and just wired in the new electrical circuit. On a whim when I connected the new breaker, I tightened down the neutrals and ground connections on all the other (26) circuits. They were all loose. Not real loose, but they all needed snugging down.
The reason for this is that over time, heat will cause the lugs to loosen a mite. It's normal but once every ten years or so, turn off your main, take the cover off the panel, and snug the terminals.
 
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Good to know. My son just installed a new outlet in my garage, but we never even thought to check this. I'll look at it later today.
 
I would love to have the nerve to do this but it took me three hours this past week just to change a wall switch. The problem is I know zero about electricity and scared to mess with it.

I have a tester that I plug into outlets and it tells me if there is a problem. According to it, this home has 18 reversed neutrals. I would love to know how to fix that and be able to do so. Yet I do not see how the problem can be. The original owner of this house was a Master Electrician and did the wiring himself as the house was being built.

Now if I could hire you to correct all this work, I would sleep better at night. Electricians in this area are more difficult to find than a Colt Diamondback in 4 inch. We have plenty but they are all booked with work. Called one last week and he said all 38 of his electricians are busy until maybe March.
 
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oldman45: Odds are you won't find it in the panel, it's probably in the back of an outlet. If any outlet in a circuit gets wired backwards, the rest in the circuit will follow suit, and it's not hard to wire one backwards. You have a black wire and a white wire. The black wire gets connected to the brass colored terminal and the white wire gets connected to the silver colored terminal. In less-than-desirable lighting conditions, it's not hard to mess it up. I "lost" a neutral once and ended up pulling every outlet in the hall, two bedrooms and a bath out of the wall for examination before I found that one wire had worked it's way loose from one outlet.
A reversed neutral means that when you plug in a table lamp, the screw shell (threaded metal part of the lamp socket) is the "hot" side instead of the grounded side. This is a shock hazard if you don't unplug the lamp when you change a bulb.

And you wouldn't want to hire me. I know just enough to be dangerous!:eek:
 
Not meaning to jack this thread but in my case, this house has three breaker panels, each with 10-30 breakers. One is in the garage on the other side of the wall from the meter. Another is in a spare bedroom closet. The third is in the storage room, which is actually a two room mother in law cottage, that is only used to store things that are seldom used. It is cooled and heated but only has three ceiling lights and eight wall outlets so I am not sure why 10 breakers are needed in the panel.

The wiring in this house is a disaster and I have had electricians come work her for various things but they stay a day, I get a large bill and there is always work that still needs to be done.
 
And that's why I place the phrase "Master Electrician" right up there with "Jumbo Shrimp" and all those others. :)
 
Seem to remember hearing that this "loosening" was a problem when using aluminum wire with some receptacles designed for copper wires.

In the last month I have been changing receptacles and switches in an older house that I bought.

Hall lights had two switches for one lamp. Quite a normal situation. But, at times one particular combination of switch positions would not turn the light on. Cost for a replacement switch was less than $3.00. Not worth trying to figure out which switch was bad, just replaced both with new ones.

Bekeart
 
oldman45 said:
I would love to have the nerve to do this but it took me three hours this past week just to change a wall switch. The problem is I know zero about electricity and scared to mess with it.

I have a tester that I plug into outlets and it tells me if there is a problem. According to it, this home has 18 reversed neutrals. I would love to know how to fix that and be able to do so. Yet I do not see how the problem can be. The original owner of this house was a Master Electrician and did the wiring himself as the house was being built.

Now if I could hire you to correct all this work, I would sleep better at night. Electricians in this area are more difficult to find than a Colt Diamondback in 4 inch. We have plenty but they are all booked with work. Called one last week and he said all 38 of his electricians are busy until maybe March.
Click to expand...

Outlets are wired in parallel and if an upstream outlet has the neutral and hot switched, it switches those downstream of it, too. So you probably don't have 18 outlets wired wrong. Just a few would cause the situation you have.

I know you don't want to mess with this, but in case you ever do, here's how:

Find the breaker which controls a series of outlets. Using a voltmeter, make sure they're all dead by doing this:
1. Check your voltmeter on a live circuit, getting a ~120V reading.
2. Test the dead circuit for 0 volts.
3. Then, go back and test the voltmeter again on a live circuit for 120V.

If those three steps don't work out exactly as described, STOP RIGHT THERE. Voltmeters which will work for this purpose and a whole lot more can be had for $20. They're a really good tool to have around the house.

Check the wiring in the circuit breaker box. A BLACK wire should be connected to the circuit breaker. If not, there's the start of your trouble. If it is a black wire, make sure its corresponding white wire is connected to the neutral bus and the bare ground wire is connected to the ground bus. Then, pull off the cover plates of each DEAD outlet and look to see if black wires are connected to the hot side of each outlet. I believe the hot side of the outlet is the side which accepts the smaller of the two plug blades. If you see white on either of the two connections on this side, then those are the wires you need to switch.

This is easier to do than it is to explain.

Another safety tip: Look away from the circuit breaker box when you flip a breaker. Those things have been known to explode. Rare, but it has happened.
 
Since the main panel appears to be in the garage, it must be an attached garage. Any other panel is a sub panel. It could be as simple as a sub supplied from the main is cross wired on either end. Given your misgivings about working on the problem: I think you should mark the outlets in question, so as to avoid or be careful of using them. Any licensed electrician should be able to fix you up. I'd suggest you go that way.
 
This is a very informative thread, truely appreciated.
I think I have that problem in my garage circuit because I noticed that the volume of my radio I have in the garage will go up or down depending on if I plug another item in another garage out let.

Your info "The black wire gets connected to the brass colored terminal and the white wire gets connected to the silver colored terminal. In less-than-desirable lighting conditions, it's not hard to mess it up." is very basic and important. It should be printed on every new outlet we purchase, but it is not. Thank you.
 
cp1969 said:
This is easier to do than it is to explain.

.
Click to expand...


A good post.

Please allow me to add another step: At each outlet or light switch, you've just found which breaker controls it. Get out your pencil and paper and log it in. On each face plate (the trim cover), indelibly mark which breaker number controls it. Then this may sound stupid, but instead of the one line description for that breaker, write a novel! Yes, make a full sheet for each breaker of which outlets it covers. Its easy, you'll never remember it, but you've got the knowledge at that moment.

A poster above mentioned dual switch controls for lights above. His suggestion was to just change both when a problem is found. One step more...throw away the suspect ones. If you're not going to test them right then and there, pitch both away.

There's another tester I've had for decades. Its a little neon thing that is made much like a 3 prong plug. It has a series of lights that glow when you plug it in. It tells you as it diagnoses your problem (or non problem) outlets

Yes, my home is ugly and getting uglier. I have little strips from a labelmaker that saves me the problem of trying to remember.
 
That's good advise Dick. In the industrial/commercial electrical world we put the panel number (cause there's more than one usually) and then the circuit number on the face of every switch and outlet. Often required in the job specifactions. We use Brady labelers.

And yes, throw away back commponents!


Cat
 
be very careful as a number one rule. 2nd rule don't trust those plug in testers I have caught them in a lie a few times. if you have a good meter say a fluke, ideal something that cost more than $15 then try this. 3rd rule is this is not a fix it explaination but rather so you can inform the electrician as to what you found out. Set your meter to the ac setting. I have saved a lot of time turning my meter on the correct setting as opposed to dc. Faceing the receptacle, plug in one of the leads to the right hand hole this should be the hot side. Then plug the probe in the left verticle hole you should read 120 volts or there abouts. Then pull the prode out of the left hole and plug your probe into the bottom round hole you should get 120 volts. If these don't work then leave the probe in the round hole and pull the probe out of the right side of the receptacle and plug back into the left side. If you have 120 volts there it's not good then you have a reversed polarity receptacle. Now for the last test plug your probe into the right side of the receptacle and the other probe into the round hole at the bottom. if you have no 120 volts there then you could have a reversed receptacle or an absent ground. Some of the older houses don't have ground wiring and these plug in testers will tell a different story rather than the true one. When in doubt get a licensed, insured, qualified electrician. I have fixed countless problems cause by someone being too frugal to pay an electrician to fix the problem the firsyt time. Unless someone does this kind of work everyday, not a carpenter, or has worked in the field for 20 years and is now retired then don't let just anybody mess with your wiring especially old wiring. My old electrician used to say" pay me now or pay me more later to fix it". A little bit of knowledge is good if you are using it to make sure you are not getting conned by a professional. If you don't know what your doing and do it anyway make for sure that you have new batteries in the smoke detectors and maybe even get a carbon monoxide detector close to your bedroom. Remember just because it works doesn't mean it's right. I have fixed a many of receptacles that had started to melt because of bad wiring practices. Dr mangula proved in ww2 that it only takes .06 of an amp to put your heart in A fib. Also a young heart will pump blood for a good while in A fib before it will stop so know your limitations. If you can't afford an electrician all at once make payments to one. I'm not trying to be harsh just seen all these thing for 10 years as a service electrician and know what the outcome can be. Doeboy
 
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