I'm a homeowner who had a remodel done about 10 years ago. We had some things happen that bothered me, such as temporary but significant dimming of lights when a load came on, and that worsened over time. I worried about this more as we found a number of safety problems over the years, such as lamp cord instead of NM cable in some of the walls, hot unterminated NM cable, equipment grounding conductor bonded to grounded conductor (apparently to fool the inspector's tester) in outlet boxes, etc.
I hired two electricians at various times to come out and see if they could find anything wrong. Both failed to see something that in retrospect should have been obvious. I'm posting this to educate others.
Last week my wife got up before dawn and when she turned on the light, it acted like it just burned out, except that the whole circuit had gone. When I investigated, I discovered that one of the hot legs (we have 120/240V) was delivering 0 volts, so every other circuit on the panel was dead. I determined that the problem was before the panel, and therefore called the power utility company.
The person who came out immediately saw the problem, from the ground. The wires had never been properly connected to the utility. The electricians had used splice blocks (I think that's what they're called, with set screws) to connect the aluminum lines at the drip loop, and wrapped them with electrical tape. Water had gotten in, and the hots were corroded. Finally, one had given out.
The dimming has gone away.
Somebody screwed up a long time ago, forgetting to call the utility after the final inspection to do the permanent connections, and I, being a dumb homeowner, didn't know any better. (I did think it weird that so much care is taken inside with wiring but that it was just electrical tape outside.) But the electricians who came out should have known this was wrong, if only they had looked reasonably carefully. I know that the last one who came did scan up there.
I hired two electricians at various times to come out and see if they could find anything wrong. Both failed to see something that in retrospect should have been obvious. I'm posting this to educate others.
Last week my wife got up before dawn and when she turned on the light, it acted like it just burned out, except that the whole circuit had gone. When I investigated, I discovered that one of the hot legs (we have 120/240V) was delivering 0 volts, so every other circuit on the panel was dead. I determined that the problem was before the panel, and therefore called the power utility company.
The person who came out immediately saw the problem, from the ground. The wires had never been properly connected to the utility. The electricians had used splice blocks (I think that's what they're called, with set screws) to connect the aluminum lines at the drip loop, and wrapped them with electrical tape. Water had gotten in, and the hots were corroded. Finally, one had given out.
The dimming has gone away.
Somebody screwed up a long time ago, forgetting to call the utility after the final inspection to do the permanent connections, and I, being a dumb homeowner, didn't know any better. (I did think it weird that so much care is taken inside with wiring but that it was just electrical tape outside.) But the electricians who came out should have known this was wrong, if only they had looked reasonably carefully. I know that the last one who came did scan up there.
