We were recently contacted by a customer who was selling her townhouse in a local development and had an independent home inspector give her a report that indicated a 12% voltage drop on some bedroom outlets. He indicated in his report that he had used an Ideal "161-155" tester. We looked up that number but have not been successful in locating it even on the Ideal site, although they do talk about a 61-155, but every time we tried to get additional information on it, we kept getting sent to a description of the 61-165 unit.
Since our supply houses locally do not carry the Ideal tester mentioned, we could not duplicate his testing procedure, so we had to devise our own 'test' method. We used a 1kw plug-in utility light to 'load' the circuit in question at various points along the run to observe what happened, while measuring the voltage at the breaker and then at outlets along the run. The voltage at the breaker was solid at 120V. Three outlets away from where the first outlet was installed (about 56 feet), we found a 2.5 volt drop. At the last outlet on the run we found a 6.5 volt drop. This is a 15A, 120V circuit, which is about 155' end to end.
Doing some quick calculations, it looks like our measured drop was about 5.4% and extrapolating that to full load (15A), looks like the overall voltage drop on the circuit is around 10%, not the 12% the house inspector had indicated.
My question is, does anyone have any experience with either the unit mentioned here or another brand or model and if so have you found it helpful and accurate?
Since our supply houses locally do not carry the Ideal tester mentioned, we could not duplicate his testing procedure, so we had to devise our own 'test' method. We used a 1kw plug-in utility light to 'load' the circuit in question at various points along the run to observe what happened, while measuring the voltage at the breaker and then at outlets along the run. The voltage at the breaker was solid at 120V. Three outlets away from where the first outlet was installed (about 56 feet), we found a 2.5 volt drop. At the last outlet on the run we found a 6.5 volt drop. This is a 15A, 120V circuit, which is about 155' end to end.
Doing some quick calculations, it looks like our measured drop was about 5.4% and extrapolating that to full load (15A), looks like the overall voltage drop on the circuit is around 10%, not the 12% the house inspector had indicated.
My question is, does anyone have any experience with either the unit mentioned here or another brand or model and if so have you found it helpful and accurate?