A couple months ago I moved into a new house and all my electric things worked fine in my room. About a week before finishing moving in, my entire right wall, bathroom, and closet power went out. I thought at first it might be a breaker, so I went through every one in the house, only to discover it was on the same circuit as the rest of my room that still has power. I used my multimeter and found the power was actually only half out... It was just about exactly 60 volts instead of the usual 115-120. When you flip a light switch on (on one of the switches on the dead part) the voltage drops to zero. I have done everything I know to do. The only things I did to the room were replace the two lightswitches in the room as well as replace the ceiling fan. I would suspect something with those caused the problem but it had happened before I replaced anything, and I've pulled both switches and the fan back out and checked the wiring and it's all correct and not uncovered anywhere. Has anyone seen anything like it?
I'd contact the power company or an electrician. Something to this extent happened to a friend of mine (something where they messed up the ground wire I think). It sounds like it may be something similar... especially since that dropping to zero thing could be because AC power really averages to 0v or something is whacked with ground.
The reason you saw the voltage drop to zero when you turned the light on was because the light added a load to the circuit and all the voltage was being dropped across a bad connection somewhere. You need to find out how the line to the rooms is routed in the walls. It may come from a socket or light switch in another room but on the same wall. Hopefully you will find the bad connection at a twist lock connection. There are signal tracers available but you should be able to find the problem with a little hunting in the boxes.
actually i saw the same thing happen recently where i work, it sounds like one of your positives gpt knocked out somehow (two come into the house for 115 and 230 applications) and b/c of that your house is able to power some things by themself b/c they require less power. call an electrition, that is really dangerous
When power comes into the house in the US you have 2 phases, when one is at +120 (actually 120/.707 or something like that but...) the other is at -120. You use them in series to get the 240 for dryers, stoves, waterheaters ans what not. If you lose one, all your 240 appliances stop working right, and you lose half the house on that phase. The fact that it is 60v on that line is strange, since it is exactly half. I wouldn't think bad connections would give you that, since in houshold wiring there is no reason for a wire to fail really, its not like it is moving. It sounds that you did lose one of your phases, and that a 240v appliance is forming a voltage divider or something and dividing that 120v down to 60v at a low current level(probably still high enough to be lethal though). Just a guess though Try turning off all your 240v appliances at the breaker box and see if there is still 60v on that line.
Next time I get a chance I'll try that. Thanks! I'm getting along as best I can as it is until I can get someone out. I was hoping I could do this myself but it seems it's a bit over my head. Oh, and I do have one of those circuit tracers, although they only work on a powered circuit, so they're not much use here.
to me it sounds like one of the cables in the series of wall outlets has come loose... That can be a bit dangerous.. Pretty big chances of fire after a while if you try to put load on it... 60V comes from the voltage of one phase and ground. try measuring between ground and the two phases. Borth SHOULD be around 60 volts
No it is 120v on each phase, 240 across both. The neutral should be at the same potential as ground, but as load increases it can go a few volts above ground, it is what the 2 phases are referenced to.
I'm afraid that's not quite how it works. It's not possible to have a "-120V" or "+120V" AC supply. Phases are usually 120° out of phase with each other. Your problem does sound like a fault with your earthing or return path. Is the supply ok to the rest of the house?
oops... didn't notice you were in the US... i think you have different system... Here (norway) we have ground, and 2 phases (wich is tecnicly wrong.. was called one phase before).. however, all equipment here uses 230v... It's getting more normal with 400V lines now (3phase system) wich also have neutral.. Anyway, i thing you should get hold of an electrician to get it fixed... in the meantime, disconnect the circuit..
Ndtinker: This is really a simple problem. You can locate this yourself if you want to try. The only thing you need to do is open up some outlet covers and look for a bad connection. The bad connection will most likely be in a box near the disabled area but it may be tied to another place in the house. I suspect that there is a feed wire connection in one of the outlets that is making a bad splice connection inside a wire nut. This can happen if the insulation is not stripped back far enough and a few wires are being spliced together with the wire nut. Checking the splices in the live outlets and light switch boxes near the problem area will be your best bet. If you do decide to try this just be careful. It would be best to identify the breaker that handles the circuit you are looking at and turn the breaker off while looking things over. You can turn it back on to do a test if you need to. Since there is a little controversy about houshold wiring I thought I might add my understanding of it. The power comes into the house from a transformer that has a center tap. The center tap is the neutral wire for the power system. The two ends are the hot sides with 120 volts between each of them and the center tap. Across the two hot leads then is 240 volts. Appliances using 240v tie across the two hot leads. Other things needing less power tie across one of the two legs and to the neutral. With the neutral lead handling both sides of the 120v power there is no current flow in the neutral lead if both sides of the 120v legs are using exactly the same current because the opposite flowing currents in the neutral lead will cancel each other out. When there is a imbalance in the currents then there is a difference current flowing in the neutral lead. The times when things are perfectly balanced is pretty rare so you need a good size neutral wire to handle the current along with the hot leads. I have measured the neutral lead to ground at times when they are not bonded together and also seen the 60volts. This is due to leakage I believe. If you tied a light load to it, the reading would drop to zero.
this exact same thing happened to me in my room. it seems that one plug in one outlet worked and the rest only partally worked. i had a dsl modem pluged into the functioning outlet that was working fine but a florescent light that was jsut flickering on the other side of the room. i replaced the outlets and noticed that the person who wired it before me didnt take any regard to the color of the wires. when i replaced the outlets i noticed that all the outlets had the hot wire connected to the wrong terminal and the bad outlet wireing was so bad i cant remeber how it was connected.
It just dawned on me that most of the readers here are from the European side of the planet. I live in the US and houses here are wired up a little different, at least as far as voltages and frequency goes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a standard outlet in Europe run at around 220 volts @ 50 hertz. I would assume the power to the house is run in a similar fashion as we do it here in the US but I don't know for sure. SteveyG: I'm not sure what you mean by ring outlets. As fas as three phase power goes, that is usually made available to the higher power users. Some houses have it but these are usually places that require high current for a large pump motor for instance. Most homes will just use one of the phases tied to a transformer that provides the two 120 volt legs.
Normal housing circuits are 2-phase as cougar described, though Ive never seen the neutral floating 60v above ground. (provided that the ground is working correctly) If it is I would at least give the power company a call. For industrial/commercial power, you can get 400v 3-phase, or even higher. We have 3-phase power in my school weld shop for example, the grinders use it. I kind of figured it was a little US/Europe difference thing going on. Edit: cougar beat me...
You say you moved into a new house; Is the house itself old or new? If it is new, then it would seem your ground on that portion of the circuit is not connected. You'll need to check that the ground wire is connected in all boxes (Switches, outlets and lights) on the circuit - the point where it changes to 60 volts is the ideal starting location. When you changed the switches and installed the fan it's possible that the cabling was not fastened securely during installation and actually pulled loose from another connection down the line. If you don't find anything wrong it's also possible the wiring was partially severed - over enthusiastic stapling. If the house is old (25-100+ years) have an electrician check it out. Some older houses have no grounding intentionally.
Not. Single phase applications in the USA, as in a residence, have 3 lines coming in from the power company. 2 lines at 120v when read to neutral or ground, or 240v when read from line to line. The other line is a neutral. The earth ground is picked up via a ground rod below your meter base.
Sounds a bit like the 110V used over here for portable tools. A centre-tapped step-down transformer gives 110V across the two "hots" but only 55V between a "hot" & the grounded third wire. Our UK 3-phase system gives 230V any phase to neutral, 230x(sq.root 3) = 400V between any two phases, so not quite the same as the US system.
Do you folks in the UK have three phase going to the houses there, or do you have a split phase like we do here in the US? Two hot legs and a neutral. Edit: After reading your post again CPEMMA it looks like you have the same house wiring as we do if all your normal outlets run at 110v. I thought European homes ran around 220 volts to the outlets. Maybe this in just some countries. I assume you run at 50 hertz also.
Sorry if I misled you, the 110V is only used for portable tradesmen's tools, a safety feature. They'll carry a 230-110 transformer or it's wired into factories, etc. from a central transformer. Houses have a single phase 230V 50Hz supply, Live & Neutral coming in and a Safety Earth fitted inside. Down the street some houses will be on 1 phase, others another, to balance up the loading.
