Eating breakfast with the kids and half the power in the house goes off. Just the right hand bank of breakers. 10 minutes later it comes back on but at 49V. My assumption is that it's something outside the house, it's windy. However, I turned the breakers off 1 by 1 and when I turn the 220V breaker off for the water heater it turns the whole house off.
Bad breaker?
More data. Power is 49V and 120V measured at the lugs on the main breaker, unless I get shut the main off and then they go to 68V and 120V.
Sounds like a phase is out.
That happened at work often. It can really hurt electric motors and some electronics.
You may want to shut everything off.
We're getting a bit of flickering and voltages are wobbly. I've shut off power to all the computers and all of the 220V except for the one that somehow turns everything off.
I'm going to kill the main when I leave to drop off the kids in a second.
Do you have a “report outage” on your supplier’s site? Ours has a map too so you can see if it’s been reported yet
The one that shuts everything off is definetly the 1 I would shut off first.
Sounds like it is somehow back feeding voltage to everything else.
Something similar happened to us a few years ago. It turned out to be a corroded crimp connection on one of the main legs in the breaker box. We lost everything electronic that was plugged in. Even the vent hood. Turn off the main ASAP.
wvumtnbkr said:The one that shuts everything off is definetly the 1 I would shut off first.
Sounds like it is somehow back feeding voltage to everything else.
When I turn off the water heater breaker is kills the entire house as effectively as shutting off the main. I'm thinking I need to go home and pull it out of the box and see if that's the issue. It's a breaker behaving differently than every other breaker in the house.
In reply to Patrick :
Yes, we have a map down to the individual street level and everything is green.
The breaker for the water heater should not affect anything other than the water heater. Something is not right. I guess a brown out, or poor connection somewhere before your meter, or perhaps in the meter socket itself.
mazdeuce - Seth said:More data. Power is 49V and 120V measured at the lugs on the main breaker, unless I get shut the main off and then they go to 68V and 120V.
Turn off your main breaker.
Contact the power company.
My neighbors and I had intermitant brown outs where we were losing a phase. The "smart" meters our suplier installed did NOT detect the issue. We had to call multiple times and it took multiple visits before the linemen happened to still be there when one of the phases dropped. It was super frustrating because the presence of the smart meter seemed to make the power company believe there couldn't be an issue. It was the wiring at the power pole where the lines to the houses drop down, multiple homes affected. I lost all faith in the smart meters after that. I guess they only detect total power outages (if that). I guess what I'm saying is call the power company.
Sounds like power company is the best call.
I would probably completely unplug computers, etc in case of a surge.
Just absolutely bizarre stuff. The bad leg will lose voltage as I turn breakers on. Oddly the meter has now gone completely blank. I should call the power company.
Because I have nothing else to do while I wait for the power company.......if I turn individual bulbs on in the kitchen I can watch voltage drop. If I plug the fridge in it basically kills the circuit. I ran extension cord to an outlet on the other leg and it's fine.
My understanding is that I have two hot 120V wires and one neutral coming into the house. If the neutral bad coming in or weird anywhere in the house then it would affect both legs. If I'm getting voltage drop on only one leg then it must be related to that one wire coming in the house. The fact that it's not isolated to any given circuit on that leg but appears to be load related to the one leg (maybe) might mean it's the one leg coming into the house? Either the meter or connections or transformer or something?
I'm not trying to solve this myself anymore, just trying to guess at what it is.
You have a bad 120v leg. It isn't able to flow enough amperage, which is why you have a voltage drop.
The greater the amount of amperage you try to pull, the greater the voltage drop.
Turn off the main breaker, and wait for the power company.
Power company guy is here. He thinks he can get it sorted. He said all of the connections going into my pole look sketchy. He also noted that the meter is off. I totally dig his F550 bucket truck.
You lost a leg somewhere, its backfeeding thru the 220v breaker to the other side. Let the power co deal with it.
You guys were right. The connection between the wires coming off the pole and the wires coming out of the mast was bad. He ran new wires up the mast from the meter, cleaned everything on the power line end and did a proper connection and it's good as new. It's almost kind of fun to learn about this sort of stuff as long as it doesn't cost money. 
Thats good service that it was taken care of so quickly too I do say.
mazdeuce - Seth said:You guys were right.
this is the GRM forum. On technical questions, eventually, we are *always* right.
AngryCorvair said:mazdeuce - Seth said:You guys were right.
this is the GRM forum. On technical questions, eventually, we are *always* right.
QFT. Especially after it's professionally sorted.
(not) WilD (Matt) said:My neighbors and I had intermitant brown outs where we were losing a phase. The "smart" meters our suplier installed did NOT detect the issue. We had to call multiple times and it took multiple visits before the linemen happened to still be there when one of the phases dropped. It was super frustrating because the presence of the smart meter seemed to make the power company believe there couldn't be an issue. It was the wiring at the power pole where the lines to the houses drop down, multiple homes affected. I lost all faith in the smart meters after that. I guess they only detect total power outages (if that). I guess what I'm saying is call the power company.
A meter (smart or not) isn't there to monitor power outages. It's only function is to meter how much power you consume for billing. It literally just completes the circuit from the supplier to your panel and reads how much you use. Nothing more nothing less. I believe the only smart about them is that the power company can read them remotely via driving by with a scanner, or somehow via the net. No more meter readers that get out of the vehicle to physically read the meter for billing.
Mazdax605 said:(not) WilD (Matt) said:My neighbors and I had intermitant brown outs where we were losing a phase. The "smart" meters our suplier installed did NOT detect the issue. We had to call multiple times and it took multiple visits before the linemen happened to still be there when one of the phases dropped. It was super frustrating because the presence of the smart meter seemed to make the power company believe there couldn't be an issue. It was the wiring at the power pole where the lines to the houses drop down, multiple homes affected. I lost all faith in the smart meters after that. I guess they only detect total power outages (if that). I guess what I'm saying is call the power company.
A meter (smart or not) isn't there to monitor power outages. It's only function is to meter how much power you consume for billing. It literally just completes the circuit from the supplier to your panel and reads how much you use. Nothing more nothing less.
That isn't how they were advertised to people in my area. A big "selling point" on getting people to accept them was the quick detection of power outages and other delivery issues. My neighbor was literally told over the phone that there probably wasn't an external problem with his service because the meter would have let them know. The reality is that they seem to only be able to indicate a total outage, and customer service isn't great... I do not doubt the abilities of the meters were oversold, but I am just repeating what was comunicated to us consumers.
AngryCorvair said:mazdeuce - Seth said:You guys were right.
this is the GRM forum. On technical questions, eventually, we are *always* right.
Eventually 
You'll need to log in to post.
