Vince | The life time of the electrical cables depends on a number of factors not excluding the conditions of usage(whether industrial or residential),the quality of the cable,its make.Usually,if there is no problem as such, the cable last for few years,sometimes decades.Most of the times it is the human made issues that break or bury the cable.Hence sufficient care should be taken.For residential wiring,I think you should keep checking the wiring once every three to five years. Hope this helps you.Good Luck. Swastik
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 Q. New house, electrical issues from day 1? i bought this house in 2003 and it was built over 6 months. from day one the breakers have tripped from little things. the light switches didn't work right. i had the builder's electrician check & he found no problems. but it's 5 years later and running the microwave & toaster at the same time will blow a breaker; turn on the lights with the computer on? breaker trips. plug the vacuum in the hallway when nothing else is plugged in, in that area, and the living room lights flicker. it's really driving me nuts! was this house wired wrong in the first place? is this something i can check for a source on my own, or do i have to call a professional?
my home warranty is 10 years. just an fyi. i will have to get a hold of the warranty people for details.
also, i asked for help, not commentary on whether or not i procrastinated.
thank you to the first two responders, much appreciated.
"The thing is..."
You have at least two different problems. The reason the breaker trips when you run the toaster and the microwave at the same time is because they are on the same circuit and they draw more amps together than the circuit can carry. In newer homes, it is normal to have the microwave, the dish washer, the refrigerator, the range [if it is electric], and sometimes the garbage disposer on separate circuits so you will not be constantly blowing circuits. In addition to this, in better built homes the kitchen electrical receptacles are on at least two separate circuits so you can toast bread and brew coffee at the same time.
The thing is, depending upon where you live the way the kitchen was wired might meet the electric code, because the code is minimum requirements. It probably does not meet what the builder promised you but as to whether that will be covered under the warranty is something else. It is technically safe, but a real pain, as I am sure you already know.
The problem with the computer and the lights is very likely a code violation. Almost all current state electrical codes require in residential housing that the circuits that have receptacles be on a different breaker than the lighting circuit. This is so if the lighting circuit trips and will not reset you can plug a lamp into a receptacle so you can have light in the room[s] until you get the broken light fixed. Likewise, if you have a problem with a receptacle, you can turn on a light to see what is wrong. This would definitely be covered by your warranty.
The lights blinking when the vacuum is used might or might not be caused by lights and receptacles being on the same circuit.
Sorry to have to give you bad news, but I would call an electrician in to make sure you do not have a dangerous situation. Unless you really know what you are doing, and most people do not, running electrical wires in the kitchen so you can have more circuits is not something you attempt unless you know what you are doing.
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Q. Electrical conduit in breaker box shorting whole house and damaging pipes and appliances. sue electrician? my parents hired an electrican a couple of years ago to change the circuit breaker boxes for two floors. few months later we began to have problems with the breakers tripping because of an unknown reason, other than a theory that wires somewhere in the house are touching. later we began to have pipe problems because some pipes are touching the conduit and makes sparks, and little by little pipes began breaking because they developed holes. back then i did not know what was going on, neither did my parents. but i have entered college and got some electrical knowledge i realized that the problem must have been caused by the box. we did not suspect that before coz the house is really old and might need rewiring, but yesterday 2 breakers went off and i checked the boxes. there it is, the wires were not properly protected and the conduit damaged most of them, which created a fire hazard. now if i find the electrican, can i sue him for damages and endagerment to the family and the property?
sounds like the pipes are not properly bonded and the panel is energized.. First off get an electrical contractor who is credible and diagnose the problem , then go from there
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Q. Issue with my electrical wiring. where to start? we're having an electrician come out next week, but i am curious too on some other opinions based on the info i provide. the house was built in 1989.
basically we have 1 room that has a bad outlet. i have been running a fan on that outlet almost every night with no problems for about four years till i started to move to college. i ran a vacuum on that outlet and suddenly the outlet stopped working. the lights also stopped working in the room and the hallway. the breaker (sp?) did not switch and the other room on that breaker did not have any issues.
well, it suddenly started working one day when my mom went to columbus to visit me. she returned and noticed the hallway and my room light on. a little bit later, she remembered that it hadn't been working for about three months. then one day she vacuumed the room and accidentally plugged the switch back into the one i used for the fan and the room went dead.
it stayed that way till i moved back last december. we have an outlet in the room that is two-pronged instead of three-pronged. i think my father may have replaced when he was alive and i have vague memories from when i was three, but my mom doesn't think he did. it is the only outlet in the house that is two-pronged. when i plugged it in, there was a spark and the room lit up again and the hallway started working.
well, two nights ago we have had some heavy rain and the lights started flickering. then yesterday the lights in the hallway were flickering really bad and just dimmed itself after maybe three minutes of flickering. my room light wasn't working either and i did not test the other outlets. we turned off the breaker that we assumed also affects the hallway as the hallway isn't listed on there.
now, we have had the roof replaced about ten years ago and my mom is wondering if it is water damage because we had some water damage on the attached garage roof. i am sort of wondering why it started working when i plugged something in the only two-prong outlet in the whole house.
we also have a crawl space and we had some work done on the foundation of the house on the corner. they had to cut into the front wall and found that there was a rodent nest (probably either mice or rats) and they had started chewing on a wire in the living room. (the wire was checked but it was ok and patched up) it was the opposite side of the house on the lower level though. they didn't find anything active, but i doubt that they would as they were cutting into the wall so the rodents would probably run away. the cats were freaking out at the corner of the house a few months prior.
also, i've noticed in some rooms when i plug my computer in, it'll spark. however, that is in the addition.
and in the room with the faulty outlet, there is a phone jack that when used, it'll sound like a modem is dialing out and the other person hears the sound too. it was the jack itself. i only used it a few times as that became annoying fast. however, that may have been caused by wasps nesting near the phone wires as at one point we lost our entire phone and dsl service till we killed the wasps and pushed the wires up into the box.
thanks for any advice anyone offers as to where to start or opinions on what may be causing it.
It sounds like there may be a dead-short in that particular circuit. It could be due to chewed up wiring where the "hot" and the "neutral" wire are touching each other or the hot wire may be touching to ground. You may also have an issue with the circuit breaker being too large for the gauge of the wire that the circuit has feeding it. If your circuit breaker is too large for that actual circuit you can cause an electrical fire. Make sure that you leave that circuit turned off and don't use it until you have a "licensed" electrician look at it. If you are running any kind of vacuum cleaners on that circuit, you would be wise to have a three-prong "duplex" outlet of the proper amperage installed too.
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Q. Is it true that electrical wires can vibrate when in use? a guy at home depot scared the beejeezus out of me today when showing me those little strain relief screws you are supposed to use at the service panel if you drop a new electric wire in. he said electrical wires can vibrate against the sharp metal, wear through the wire casing, and pose a fire hazard over time if you don't use the reliefs. i have only wired two new circuits into my house panel in the past few years, but i didn't pay close attention to it. i'm going to check it again as i'm doing some new wiring ... but is this true? i always thought wires inside the walls or panel were still and secure with or without the strain relief?
Wires subjected to very very high voltages will vibrate due to the electromagnetic field generated by the flowing current. With smaller voltages and currents the vibration is much less, and generally not destructive.
In your case, the strain relief screws are to prevent the wires from being pulled out of the panel, NOT due to vibrating wires. He was right that you should use them, but wrong for the reasoning.
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Q. House has rats..question on getting rid of and possible electrical issues? we are moving into my parents old home that has layed dormant for about 3 years. (they went into a nursing home)
the house doesnt get checked on much..... maybe 2-3x a year. recently i went over and say some pretty good destruction. carpet clawed at, doors with scracth marks...feces which i think is rat............
i called orkin and they layed some poison and glue traps... is there anything else i can do to inhibit them from staying?
also, how do you make sure that they havent chewed wires? how much doesn an electrical checkup cost?
You will now need to check the property for dead rats. When they eat the Poison - the search for water. Nothing worst than rotting rat smell.
You can pay an electrician to come out but it will be expensive. Does the house have safety switches? If so you can walk Thur the house turning on one light at a time, see if it set the switch off. If it doesn't have a safety switch. I think you are going to have to get an electrician out. Better safe than sorry.
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Q. Our neutral wire holding up the 2 power wires to our house broke shorting out every transformer in the house? this caused every transformer big and small i.e microwave ovens, computer transformers, power sticks that caught on fire, any transformer that was operating at the time of the lost nuetral that went back to the pole transformer at 240 volts to burn out or catch fire. the lights were dim i thought it was it was a brownout. then the fire and smoke from the powersticks that supply power to my pc that was protected by a uninteruppible supply battery and was saved. the appliances were using the ground as a "neutral" and that makes me want to not ground my pc since it is on carpet and in a dry room and the power flow would have just stopped instead of trying to use the ground wire as a complete circiut and then fry all that was connected. no circiut breakers popped the voltage measured at 120 volts when i took out my meter but what i did not realize that the 2 main power lines supplying the house had no neutral and the remianing 2 live wires were laving on the roof. why did not the breakers pop even during the fire? some things kept on running even w/o a neutral and using the ground as a circuit. should i really ground the panel with a #6 cable and a very large ground electrode in wet dirt to prevent this from happening again? we would have died in that house if not for my mom and the screaming smoke detctors, i really believe in them. the smoke was so thick i could not see the electrical fire and got lost in my own room; it was completely black with superheated smoke and black sooty air and combustable gas. if i lose that neutral again (wind blowing the main wires back and forth and then the supporting wire which is the nuetral breaking) this scenario will happen again and this time we may be asleep and the whole house will go up faster than you can believe. it went up the wall and was trying to get into the attic and was so hot it melted anything plastic including skin that fries like bacon and adds to the overall fire. any ideas would be appreciated since i am living on borrowed time since the electrical company fixed the supporting wire (neutral to transformer) and this may happen again in a windstorm at night. i have lived in this house for 40 years and nothing has ever happened like this. maybe the supporting wire got old and broke after all the years of rocking back and forth but the electrical company doesn't check those things anymore like line sag etc.
not sure if I have this strait but I will try,
First if you get power from an electric company call them and submit a claim, they own the wiring to your meter and their wire almost caused serious injury. They are liable most of the time but ask a lawyer. If you are off grid have a qualified electrician help. ALL wiring should be grounded from the main point of entry in the home since the neutral wire is gone or a fault occurs a #6 bare cooper wire attached with a grounding lug to ground rod or rods depending on the soil and dry ground spaced 10' apart would carry the excess spike to ground.
Anything in your house you like should have a power conditioner or surge protection at the least.
Your breakers will not pop or trip since they did not see a spike in amps or they are oversized or not functioning properly. Have them checked.
Electricity can be dangerous so get a qualified help or have them do it. A few hundred dollars is cheaper than a house or a funeral these days.
Good luck
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Q. Electrical problem...breaker trips immediately!!? on the affected circuit, i have replaced all outlets, double checked and triple checked wiring, replaced doorbell transformer and button, replaced breaker and the breaker is still tripping as soon as i reset it. i went under the house and followed the entire length of wire, the only thing on this particular circuit are bedroom's 2 and 3 outlets and doorbell transformer. everything is new and all wires are good. i have live here for almost 2 years and this just started. no new mails or screws in the walls. the last time these outlets and doorbell worked was last friday. everything else in the entire house works, even ceiling fans in both rooms. can someone please give me some advice or tell me what else could be causing this.
Call an electrician.
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Q. Is this without a doubt the greatest country on earth if you have no conscience .? i just checked my mail and discovered a check form my insurance company paying on a claim of damages to a rental property i invested in 3 years ago . i never saw more then the first and last months rent .
i picked an addict who i knew would damage the property much more then it already was .
by the time i evicted him and his friends they had removed the fixtures and plumbing along with the electrical wiring and anything of value creating over 90,000 dollars worth of damages . i only paid 65,000 for the house but insured it well for replacement cost .
after i sink 30,000into materials and do the work myself renovating the property it will sell for over 125,000 . original investment 65,000 insurance check 90,000 future profit after repairs 60,000 total profit 120,000 dollars .
america is indeed the land of opportunity .
You're right...those addicts should have been put in government subsidized housing, then we could all pay when they tear out the fixtures.
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Q. Why is my bronco dieing while going down the road ? all the electrical ,shuts off and the dies? 3 days ago i had a power surge in my bronco ,i went to park turned off the key and it didnt shut off ,i got out and pulled the coil wire , babied it home. next day checked everything ,ie. fuses alt. batt.toggle switches.all good ,go 1 mile and it quits running ,tow to a shop . he said the ignition module burnt out .159.00 and 150 labor .i get in go 2 blocks ,dies again ? i took it back ,the thing is in mint condition ,but when i got it last month it had several wires cut ? so i put in starter,battery,water pump,radiator ,hoses,belts .reconnect all wirers ,and drive from oregan to az .all has been fine for 3 weeks excert only 12.36 volts when operate,use a twst light and it will jump to 13.66 volts ,tested alt at checker ,a+ check all fusible links x56 of them .check all wires under the hood ,like new , when i had the surge the other day it blew out both head lights im a good mechanic , i love a good challenge , i do all ,brakes to engines , but dang it im stumped . this is an 86 ford bronco 5.2 fuel injected 302 v8 4x4 in mint shape , this is a nice truck ,it sat for 2 years before i got ,hence all the parts ,injectors leak a tad , but why all the electrical now ?why didnt the fuse pop first rather than the head lights , ac motor went as fast as a jet at the same time , they cut the battery lead to alt and wired to a toggle switch,and a wire feeds the fuse panel ,no power inside with key switch . ill send you a pound of fudge or 20.00 just to pick a brain . tomorrow the shop will call wanting more money too. i gave 200.00 already and nothing to show for it . im unemployed ,dont they know? help .help;this has got me bad , no sleep .bad dreams trying to think ....what it is ? dam computers leave em in the house not in my truck please................
Might have better luck getting answers in the FORD section not the Chevy section
My guess would be a bad ignition module...just because you replaced it does not mean its still good.
Fuses blow for amps not volts...
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