Weird house electrical problem

For the last couple days I've had 2 digital clocks in 2 different rooms lose power and be flashing, also wife has seen the ceiling light in one of the rooms flicker once in a while. Figured they were all on the same circuit, maybe a bad breaker. Just did some investigating and now I'm more confused, they're on 2 different breakers. Both lights and one rooms outlets on one, other room outlets and one in the living room on a different one.

And to add to the confusion this morning I was up at 5:30 to pee, clock was out, house had gotten cool enough that the furnace kicked on just as I got back in bed. When it did the clock started flashing so it got power back when the furnace kicked on. WTF is going on ? I've opened the panel, tripped both breakers and popped them out, don't see any arc marks, don't see anything that looks burnt or arc marks anywhere in the panel.

May have to call a electrician if the beeb can't sort it out. Paging Dern.

 

Its a Haint.

Time to move

 

I'd put money down that some lazy ass piece of shit electrician used the stabs in the back of the receptacle instead of the terminal screws, and you've got a wire pulling out under load and arcing.

If it were me, here's what I'd do:

Get a count on your receptacles. All of them. Head to Home Depot and get replacement receptacles. Don't go to Menards. P&S are POS, HD has Leviton.

Get a container of Ideal tan "Twister" wire nuts. You'll need two or three for each receptacle (if the hack didn't pigtail the ground wires properly).

Buy a roll of 14-2 Romex. You won't need a full 250' roll, but bank on a foot per receptacle.

Pull each receptacle out. Cut the stabbed ends off and strip fresh wire, 3/8". Strip the jacket off the 1' of Romex and pull the black and white conductors out, strip 3/8" of bare wire clear and pigtail onto the other like-colored wires, spin the wire nut on, and using the handle of a hammer push the wire nuts and wiring into the back of the box, cut the pigtailed wires about 3" beyond the front of the box and strip 3/4" off the wire, make a loop and put it under the terminal screw, open end to the right, crimp the ends together with the tip of the strippers and tighten the terminal screw down. Always install them open end to right so tightening the screw doesn't open up your loop.

Wouldn't hurt to pull switches and check them as well, I'm sure those were stabbed as well.

Or, get an exorcist cuz your house is possessed.

 

There furnace kicked on the same time as the light because that's when the power was restored.

I had something similar on one of the 2 feeds to my my place. There was a bad connection at the service head out the pole or something. So only one side of the service panel was losing power. It finally completely went out one day and had the electric company come out and they repaired it.

But a bad connection on one side outside will cause one side of the panel to die. It was odd. But something to think about.

 

Common up here for underground services, one phase gets damaged insulation and the arcing to ground eventually burns the wire out. Intermittent issue, it is more common on overheads where wind moving the wires will cause things to go in and out.

If it was a phase going out it wouldn't just be a few receptacles or lights being affected.

 

What brand panel/breakers? How old is it? Are both circuits on the same side of the panel?

The symptoms sound similar to what a former colleague was experiencing and it was a bad breaker......do you have a main breaker??? I haven't seen one of those go bad in my short electrical career but figure if a 15/20A breaker can why not?

I'd probably do what D'ernman suggested but just start off with the two receptacles you're having problems with....this will help you identify if you indeed had a knucklehead electrician. If both of them used the zip holes then it's likely they did your whole home that way, you'll also see how much space/wire they left in each box and whether or not you'll need to make splices.

 

So two differnent rooms/breakers are acting up? Is the furnace also on a different breaker? I'd be suspect of you losing one whole 120v leg if that is the case. You could also be losing one side of the neutral bus. A lot of panels use a bonding bar to join the left and right side neutral bus, it's unlikely, but you could check that too.

For it to be an outlet affecting more than one circuit, it would have to be a multi-wire branch circuit, and the neutral would have to be a bad conection. Not impossible, but not likley. If the furnace is on a different breaker, it makes that scenario even more unlikley.

 

Added a suggestion

 

At exactly the same time the furnace (is it forced air?) kicked in, or just a moment after? This is important.

 

Aluminium or copper wire? My house was built with alum wire. I had lights flickering and stuff like that. One day ran my finger down the wires in the breaker box and heard arcing. I got a screw driver and tightened every wire and about half of the them were loose. Haven't had a problem since.

 

That's pretty much how I figured it out. When it was windy, only some lights would flicker.

 

I'm guessing he's not able to tell if the inducer had started.

 

The furnace starting could just be coincidental.

 

I first thought of the stab outlet problem until I discovered it was 2 separate circuits but will dig into those. The 2 rooms that are bothering were both redone when I first bought the place, 30 years ago.

Panel and breakers are Cutler / Hammer. Both on the same side of the panel.

Combination wood/ oil furnace. I think at the same time I heard the oil burner kick on.

Yes, 2 different. Furnace is on it's own breaker and it is on the other side of the panel, on the left, 2 that are acting up are on the right.
Sounds like I need to make sure everything in the panel is tight then start pulling outlets apart.

Copper wire.

 

If you have a furnace inducer motor problem (bad capacitor is a common failure), it can pull the whole bus down while it tries to start. That would cause anything sensitive to fail until the bus load is relieved.

While the motor attempts to spin up, you’ll get „blink mode“ on electronics and flickering lights. Once the motor is running, everything goes back to normal.

 

Check for a floating ground (usually between the house and the service pole) by turning off everything, then measure voltage. Start turning things on and watch for very low and very high voltages on the meter. If you have incandescent lights, you can watch them while powering up stuff and watching for dimming, brightening, and flickering. Don't try to fix that yourself if you suspect it, you want people with insurance to do it. Also, check the ground-fault receptacles for heat, mine all started catching fire, which hastened the power company response time from "maybe 3 days" to 20 minutes.

 

While on the subject...

New house,properly wired & connected.

A lot of LEDs on dimmer (with dimmer switched to LED option).

Every time a high load turns on (Oven, water heater, microwave, etc) the buggers will flicker.

Combination of various brands of dimmers and LEDs were tested to no effect.

Shoot at me....

 

The installer (I won’t give him the courtesy of calling him an Electrician) who wired my last house was that piece of shit. He was criminally incompetent.

After we moved in and started putting load on the system, I could hear arcing in the walls throughout the house. I ended up redoing every single circuit in the house, and pulled both panels for a complete rework. A drunk monkey could have done better than he did (he actually died about 8 months after the install due to alcohol-related illness).

Even after I redid everything we still had electrical problems. I spent a lot of money on „experts“ who couldn’t figure anything out.

I ended up buying a very expensive Suretest Circuit Analyzer, and with the help of that gadget I was able to prove that the electric utility had undersized the transformer feeding the house. They upgraded the transformer, and all of the remaing gremlins went away.

None of the „expert“ electricians even knew what a circuit analyzer is, or what it does.

I learned the hard way that most of the licensed electricians in the region where I lived are the worst sort of hacks.

 

Or it could be a Vast Conspiracy.