Would you be concerned if...

E

Eye-level

Banned
one leg of your breaker box in your house was glowing red in a spot?

I am having strange electrical problems...guess I'll pull watch all night so none of us burn up.

I just pulled the meter and rewired the breaker (single 100 amp running the whole house) at the pole (at midnight no less) turned off a few circuits in the house except for the bare essentials AC and the fridge and alarm clocks and the computer and now I have the main circuit breaker inside cooled off and not glowing anymore...

Something is amiss...any ideas off the top of your head? I wonder if something is making a bad contact somewhere?
 
M

miknoypinoy

Senior Member
you changed your avatar jeff. . . glowing red or heating up usually means a bad /loose connection at the bus bar of your panel. . . it might need torquing down. . . call a qualified sparky to check it out. . . as you probably wouldn't want to complete the circuit with yourself . . you don't want to get zapped or hung up on 120v. . . good call shutting some stuff off. . . you don't want the bad phase to be drawing anymore current than it needs while it's loose. . . of course you don't know which circuits are on that phase but you have a 50/50 chance of taking it off that leg. . . thatd be my first guess. . . good luck and be safe. . .


I'm not afraid . . . YOU WILL BE. . . YOU WILL BE. . .
 
C

Carolina Photo Guy

Senior Member
Eye-level said:
one leg of your breaker box in your house was glowing red in a spot?

I am having strange electrical problems...guess I'll pull watch all night so none of us burn up.

I just pulled the meter and rewired the breaker (single 100 amp running the whole house) at the pole (at midnight no less) turned off a few circuits in the house except for the bare essentials AC and the fridge and alarm clocks and the computer and now I have the main circuit breaker inside cooled off and not glowing anymore...

Something is amiss...any ideas off the top of your head? I wonder if something is making a bad contact somewhere?
Click to expand...

You have a dead short. A loose connection results in increased amperage and heat on that particular circuit, but not a glow. A glow is the result of a solid connection between both positive and negative sides, ergo a light bulb or a stove burner.

You seem to have some confidence in your electrical ability. Without meaning insult, this confidence is misplaced. You do NOT have the ability to properly diagnose and correct this problem. You do need to get a "sparkey", however you have not considered the ramifications of your actions. The wiring in your entire house has been stressed by this event. You are probably looking at having to re-wire and or upgrade your house wiring to restore the system back to a safe and efficient state.

Be careful Bubba. I've gotten used to seeing your posts on here. I would hate for these posts to be the last I ever see from you. :(

Let us know what happens.
 
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D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
I agree with Carolina. I work in TV and saw this happen to us a couple of weeks ago. Our 900amp generator kicked on for its weekly test/warmup and the whole building shook and the place where the wires came I to the building caught on fire. We were able
To contain it before any major damage happened. It was all new wiring and we think it got damaged in the installation or either a lightening strike the week before.
 
S

slowpoke

Senior Member
Electricians don't cost that much,(cheaper than hospital bills).I'd call one and be safe all the way around.Hate to lose a friend.
 
R

RickSawThat

Senior Member
If your electrical system goes down you won't be able to charge your camera batteries and how will we be able to post more "likes" for your pictures? Get this fixed before your camera batteries die....
 
E

Eye-level

Banned
Pulled meter this morning.

The breaker on the pole was sort of janky so I bought a new breaker this morning trimmed up the cables nice and neat and made a very good connection to it.

Left meter out and then went to the inside breaker panel. That is when I realized the breaker for my kitchen range and crap was slightly out of kilter so I pulled it off and checked for good connection and noticed that particular breaker had some melting action going on. Back to Ace hardware. Replaced with new breaker. I think this was the problem.

I checked for good connections where the wires come into the house...check.

Reinstalled the breaker and meter on the pole and turned her on.

Came back into the house turned her on and then turned everything in the house on.

It has been running thirty minutes and so far everything is good. Breaker panel is nice and cool. I am going to stick around today for a few hours and see what it does. It will be 100+ today so I guess I will find out.

Thanks for all the kind comments about my well being...hahaha

Rick you are right I am not really qualified to do this crap but I am poor! I tend to always fix crap around my house whether it be installing new run capacitors on the AC (snipped a live 220 with a pair of dikes that time talk about wake your @ss up fast...thank god the dikes were insulated), replacing control boards in various appliances, installing water heater elements, etc. I have a very healthy dose of caution bordering on fear when I am messing with the electrical stuff.

Again thanks you all (I charge $60 bucks a hour plus mileage lol)

Man my camera battery lasts forever! I have charged it like maybe three times since I got the thing and I have probably shot 5000+ pics maybe.
 
E

Eye-level

Banned
What is a thread without snaps? Note the leg that got hot. Note the guardian spider! LOL

spider.JPG
 
J

jdeg

^ broke something
Staff member
Yikes. Be really careful with this. I had a friend with a loose neutral wire in his meter and it fried almost every appliance in his house. Basically everything shorted. The same could happen with a single circuit in the box.
 
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