Power surges in my house

Over the last few weeks, when a high load appliance kicks in (like the well pump or furnace) the lights in my house brighten for a second then return to normal. It seems to be getting more dramatic as time goes on. The washing machine was running and I could see the lights flicker in time to the armarure in the motor. You had to watch close, but it was doing it. They are on seperate curcuits.

House was rewired during the remodel 4 years ago, new panel and everything. Even a fresh wire from the panel to the meter. Ideas?

Check grounding. Resistance in the neutral path can cause an imbalance. Lifting a neutral can expose 110v circuits to 220v potential.

I would start by checking for loose connections.Like in your panel or in the meter fitting.Are you the only one in your neighbor hood with this going on? It could be a bad connection before your meter also like a splice in their wire or on a transformer.But I would check to see if all your connections are tight first.

As others have said inspect what is going on in the panel and the grounds first for a bad or loose ground or other loose connections. Then call the power company. It would be interesting to see if it is occurring on both legs in your box or only one.

As in most cases where electrikery behaves like it is possessed, start with the ground.

The fact that work was done on the panel points to a loose wire feeding one of the phases.

If it is at the meter end, I believe you will have to call the power company. If you have one of the new(ish) "smart meters", be aware that there have been issues with them and they do go up in flames on occasion after presenting with the symptoms you describe.

I'll repeat, bad neutral connection. If the entire house is flickering, it's probably in the panel, meter base or service entry cable. I'll hazard a guess that it's a improper crimp on the service entry cable if you have a overhead service. If they don't seal the joint before crimping, they corrode. Check the connections in the panel, then call the power company.

When a smart meter overheats it usually starts with the meter fitting getting really hot from a loose or corroded connection

I've run across 2 houses in the last couple of months that were not getting full power on one of the 2 power leads coming into the house. One was only 60 volts and the other was 75. The one with 60 volts was at the pole and happened during a real cold stretch over a weekend at a house used as a business. No one was there to notice half the circuits in the building were not working. The boiler was on that circuit and every radiator in the building froze and burst. The 75 volt one just didn't supply enough power on one of the 220 volt legs to the water heater, and they had no hot water. This one was corrosion at the meter socket and he said the lights would do the dimming thing when stuff kicked in. When you get the panel off, check the voltage where the leads connect to the individual bus bars.

Not to be overly dramatic but if you have something loose in or on your house I would want to find it pretty soon.

I am going to agree that you have a neutral/ground issue going on there.

Easiest check is ground rod driven in to the earth. Connection tight?

Engineer that works for me had similar issue. Turned out that one of the wires (Overhead road crossing) feeding the house was damaged by a passing truck.

The wire was fixed, but the unbalanced load had damaged the smart-meter and six months later the meter went up in flames. Lucky they saw it.

The power company does bear a certain responsibility for getting somewhere between 115-125 volts per leg to your house.

Many years ago I was living in a house that was occasionally getting as much as 132 volts at the meter. If they send too many volts and you can prove it and your stuff blows up, they are responsible to buy you new stuff. So they don't like over-volt situations.

When I called the power company to report over-volt, they were at my house within 1/2 hour. Fastest response I've ever seen from a utility company EVER.

Interesting... House i rent goes over 130v pretty regularly. I see a 15-20v swing depending on time of day.

When things like "lights getting brighter when high-load appliances come on" happen, it is almost certain to be a neutral line conductivity issue. I'm willing to bet either the neutral line from the meter to the pole is broken or has a bad connection, or the neutral line from the meter to the breaker box has a bad connection. I have dealt with this issue in my own home at least three times because the neighbors trees were wrecking my incoming line. Also, a good ground in/at your house doesn't mean neutral is good. Yes, they are tied together in the breaker box, but you STILL have to have a good line to the pole.

Swank Force One wrote: Interesting... House i rent goes over 130v pretty regularly. I see a 15-20v swing depending on time of day. Most houses have two lines coming in both should be around 120v give or take some,I would say I usually see it from 119-128v.They should be about the same though

EvanR wrote: The power company does bear a certain responsibility for getting somewhere between 115-125 volts per leg to your house. Many years ago I was living in a house that was occasionally getting as much as 132 volts at the meter. If they send too many volts and you can prove it and your stuff blows up, they are responsible to buy you new stuff. So they don't like over-volt situations. When I called the power company to report over-volt, they were at my house within 1/2 hour. Fastest response I've ever seen from a utility company EVER.

We had this happen. I documented it at the sockets at 145V at both legs. Turns out the transformer went bad on the poll. Insurance was notified and they in tern notified the power company that if they did not replace EVERY electrical appliance / motor / etc (including computers disposals oil burners oil pumps circulation pumps and every electrical appliance in the kitchen including the fridge blenders toasters the stove the oven/range microwaves etc.. The list was HUGE) Our insurance company actually made the list of the items that they wanted replaced and it was submitted to the Electric company. Values were assigned and we went shopping. It turns out that they were about 25% short in there estimate but they told us to expect that and to submit recipes for everything and they would pay the difference. Once we were "made whole" our insurance had to re inspect so our homeowners insurance was good. In the end it was a really big bill. Somewhere close to 15K I think if I remember. May have been less it was about 10 years back. We had three computers that each had a replacement cost at the time of over $1500 plus the monitors were assed on to that so it could have been close to 2k each