Kitchen Cookin'

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smallfish

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My daughter lives in a rental house and she tells me that about half of the house lights come on when the kitchen electric range top unit is turned on. How could this be? This is all the information that I have.
Thanks
 
smallfish said:
My daughter lives in a rental house and she tells me that about half of the house lights come on when the kitchen electric range top unit is turned on. How could this be? This is all the information that I have.
Thanks
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Could be a dropped leg at the line side of the panel or the MCB has failed and is only energizing one bus bar (only half of the panel is hot).

When the range is turned on it is back feeding one leg through the double pole CB to the other bus in the panel. This would explain half of the lights coming on when the range is used.

Do half of the outlets not work when the range is off?
 
Lost a phase either on the service drop or meter pan or main breaker most likely. Get this fixed asap as I have read temps on these connections welding in and out of service very hot and likely to cause a fire.
 
smallfish said:
My daughter lives in a rental house and she tells me that about half of the house lights come on when the kitchen electric range top unit is turned on. How could this be? This is all the information that I have.
Click to expand...
An open in one line conductor to the house. The clincher: no 240v appliances work, including that range.
 
smallfish said:
My daughter lives in a rental house and she tells me that about half of the house lights come on when the kitchen electric range top unit is turned on. How could this be? This is all the information that I have.
Thanks
Click to expand...

I bet that nothing 240v works in this house. I also bet if you turn on the ac unit the lights will dim. This is a classic open phase situation. My experience has been that it is a podco problem.

One problem is that sometimes you will read 240v at the service, however you need to test the voltage with a load. I bet you won't read 240v under load. If that isn't the problem then I'll eat my shirt..:D

Of course it could be a bad main also....
 
Once when I found this situation, the HO thought I was a magician or something. I could turn lights on and off with the range controls. :roll: He wasn't too happy later when he had to bust up a bunch of concrete to fix the UG.:mad:
 
sparkchaser1961 said:
doesn't sound like a loose neutral to me. more like an open hot like somebuddy already said. Get 'r fixed fast.
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I was just giving my standard answer for anytime a range is involved with other circuits having problems, I dont pay alot of attention to what the customer says about the lights, half of the time they say they come on or off when they are actually dimming or getting bright.... so I always just check the line and load side of the main and the neutral connection in the panel.
 
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