lights flickering then no power

[edith]

About a month ago the lights started flickering in 4 rooms exept 2 and it will still do it with no appliances on. I turn off the lights and use a lamp an all the outlets from those 4 rooms and had the same problem, then about a week ago the power went on and off every day in those 4 rooms specially at night .The breakers stay on ...we change 2 breakers to see if that was the problem but nothing changed..The other 2 rooms don't seem to have any problem..Any ideas?....why don't the breakers flip? ..

edith

[irregularjoe]

Could be a defective main breaker.
I've seen a lot of older ones get arced at the lugs causing intermittent current flow, hence flickering.
Also could be losse connections anywhere in the repsective circuits.

Did you ever see OHM'S mother in LAW?...... SHOCKING!

[kactuskid]

You need to call your power company, it sounds like there a loose wire at the pole or at your meter, this can be a dangerous situation so call them right now, they'll come out free of charge. If the loose connection is in your panel at least you'll then know for sure, but I would guess it's on their side, so please don't hesitate to call them. Let us know what you find out.

[edith]

first i want to say thankyou !!ok i call the power company they are going to send someone...but if the problem was outside ,Why don't the other 2 room have the same problem[?] ..this is an 80's movil home so we are going to check every outlet and connection, Do you thik the problem could come from there[?]

edith

[kactuskid]

Do you have aluminum wiring, I would guess not if its an 80's mobile home, so that's a good thing. If you have 240 volts comming into your home, I'm guessing that all the rooms that flicker are on just one leg of that 240 volts, the lights in the other 2 rooms are on the other 120 volt leg. If the problem is in your home then one of the legs is probably loose at your main panel and you should then call an electricain to tighten it for you.

Are the breakers for all the rooms that flicker on one side of your main breaker panel?

[edith]

no .....the breakers are on both sides ....i have try the lights and outlets from each breaker with all the others off and the problem was still there.....Another thing i notice is that one breaker [30] gives power to the lights from the kitchen,the lights from the livingroom,a light between the kitchen and the livingroom 2 outside lights ,the lights from one bedroom plus all the outlets from those rooms which are 9..isnt that to much? today i had someone change all those outlets, they notice the conections were not good.... since then everything has been ok but i wonder if that was the problem...or if its something else because of the power that was going on and off....Should i do something about that 30 breaker? [?]

edith

[kactuskid]

Hi Edith, It sounds as though you have an older home, years ago when these homes were built there was not a huge demand for electricity, no computers, microwaves, etc. So alot of these homes were wired with only one or two circuits supplying power to the entire home. They were also wired to a fuse panel and alot of times a 30 amp fuse was used to protect this wiring, even though that was not a good thing, it didn't cause alot of problems cause there was not a huge load on these wires. Then as years strolled by more and more load was demanded on these wires.

It sounds like you have a breaker panel now, and that this circuit your calling 30, is actually a 30 amp breaker. This large of breaker is not allowed on normal house wiring circuits. The wire that is on this circuit is either 14 gauge or 12 gauge wire and should be protected with a 15 amp breaker if it's 14 gauge, or a 20 amp breaker if its 12 gauge. By having a 30 amp breaker on this wire, the wire is allowed to get overtaxed and heat up. When wires in an older home get heated up like this over the years the insulation covering the wireing gets brittle and can crumble off.

You say you had outlets changed out, were they 2 prong outlets changed to 3 prong outlets. If they were then I hope the person you had change them out verified that your outlet box's were in fact grounded first. I'm guessing that these outlets were also wired up so that the wires were stuck into the little holes in the backs of them. This is called backstabbing and is the cause of alot of loose and faulty connections. Here's a link that will show you what I mean.

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/knowhow/electrical/article/0,16417,562098-9,00.html#

If you have any switchs or receptacls that are wired up using these little holes then you need to have the wires removed from the holes and wrapped around the screws on the sides.

If you had loose connections on any of these devices that could be the cause of your problems and you may be all right now, but you still need to have that 30 amp breaker changed to the proper size for the wire that it is protecting, cause it is dangerous to have that big of breaker on any wire that is less than 10 gauge wire. That's one reason the breakers not tripping with so many things on it, cause it's too large for what it's protecting. You could actually heat those wires up enough to cause a fire before that breaker would trip, so please, have it changed out to the proper size.

One last thing, yes, that is an awful lot of devices on that one circuit, the only thing you could do is have an electrician come in and either split it up for you, or run a few new circuits to areas like the kitchen and bathroom. This would take some of the demand off this particular circuit that's feeding so many rooms.