Kitchen Subpanel fading away….
BungalowJeff
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
My 100A kitchen subpanel was working fine until late last night, the lights on the dimmers where acting up. Within an hour most of the circuits have died, and the remaining circuits are getting very little juice.
No shorts or loose connections at either panel, no scorches, some ozone smell when the problem started. Power is down while I track loose connections. I am thinking a bad fuse at the main panel, but I am on a long wait list for a pro.
Thanks for any tips/ideas.
Jeff
…that’s not a mistake, it’s rustic
Replies
You need to call an electrician. Do not try to fix this yourself.
Yeah, I'm limiting myself to the obvious....that's not a mistake, it's rustic
I'm bumping myself while waiting for the electrician to call back.
There were no obvious causes, like a lightning strike, but could a surge have blown through the subpanel only? Does that even make sense?
...that's not a mistake, it's rustic
it sounds like a splice in the subs feeders has opened up.....maybe just a poor splice or perhaps physical damage to the cable, done any remodeling around the sub lately ??,.....and you are doing the best thing waiting for an electrician.
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.Wer ist jetzt der Idiot
?
I just took off a tiny porch off of the back of the house to prepare for the eventual full-sized deck. I can't imagine the banging would have affected too much since the panel is mounted to a stone wall on rock.
Electrician is coming tomorrow morning. He thinks that it sounds like a loose neutral somewhere. It makes me feel much better when he explained that a loose neutral could do so many zany things.
...that's not a mistake, it's rustic
Edited 11/13/2006 9:43 pm ET by BungalowJeff
yep,a loose Neutral can cause all sorts of damage.. almost instantly.
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.Wer ist jetzt der Idiot
?
Is the feeder aluminum? Where did the ozone smell come from?
-- J.S.
An electrician looked at everything. Apparently we were zapped with a surge that took out the main breaker in the subpanel. Fried the Microwave, the electric oven control board, a few GFCI's, and the dimmers. The surge resulted in several circuits with hot neutrals, and only two circuits working. I think the 240V through a GFCI was the ozone culprit.
Almost all fixed... ...that's not a mistake, it's rustic