Question for everyone.
First let me explain what happened to me this weekend.
Saturday morning I was messing around in the house, and tripped a breaker. After the breaker tripped strange things started to happen. The UPS that are in three locations in my house started acting funny, going on battery all at the same time. My sump pumps stopped working, and my Range had a circuit board melt. This all was happening so quick that is hardly had time to find the next issue before I was overwhelmed. So when I smelt the circuit board burning, I just ran down to the main panel, and killed the main breaker. Then I went around the house checking for any additional issues and smelling to see if anything else burned. Since I didn't find anything I returned to the panel, kill all the breakers for anything 230. and then turned the main back on. I started immediately to hear a crackling noise, and about 10 feet from me, a power strip (non surge) burst into flames. I hurried, and unplugged the strip, put the fire out, and then killed the main again. This time I started troubleshooting the problem. I noticed that whenever I turned on a breaker with a low impedance motor circuit (sump pump, washing machine, etc.) My two hots went crazy, one dropping to 50 VAC, and the other raising to 180 VAC. After all the testing, and the power company coming out, I was told I have a bad neutral.
This morning a crew showed up, dug a whole in my yard, and repaired the part of the neutral that was bad. Now I am all back in business, and my power is behaving normally. But this has left me with a question.
I understand the imbalance, I understand why I had such a increase on one line, and a drop on the other. I am a navy trained electronics technician, so I have an understanding of transformers as well.
But my question. Does this mean that my grounding in my house is not adequate? I know I have ground, I see the copper coming in the house, and I think I have a ground plate buried in the back yard. If I lose the neutral, which as my main panel is connected to the ground, shouldn't everything work? But then there is the other side of the equation telling me that without the neutral reference from the transformer, then there is no reference to maintain balance on the two hot legs.
Sorry for the long post, but I was trying to make it easy to answer without having to have a huge amount of questions going back and forth before the was a conclusion offered.
Thank in advance
Jeremy
One more thing, I have never had a power problem before this one. No spikes, surges, or brownout.
First let me explain what happened to me this weekend.
Saturday morning I was messing around in the house, and tripped a breaker. After the breaker tripped strange things started to happen. The UPS that are in three locations in my house started acting funny, going on battery all at the same time. My sump pumps stopped working, and my Range had a circuit board melt. This all was happening so quick that is hardly had time to find the next issue before I was overwhelmed. So when I smelt the circuit board burning, I just ran down to the main panel, and killed the main breaker. Then I went around the house checking for any additional issues and smelling to see if anything else burned. Since I didn't find anything I returned to the panel, kill all the breakers for anything 230. and then turned the main back on. I started immediately to hear a crackling noise, and about 10 feet from me, a power strip (non surge) burst into flames. I hurried, and unplugged the strip, put the fire out, and then killed the main again. This time I started troubleshooting the problem. I noticed that whenever I turned on a breaker with a low impedance motor circuit (sump pump, washing machine, etc.) My two hots went crazy, one dropping to 50 VAC, and the other raising to 180 VAC. After all the testing, and the power company coming out, I was told I have a bad neutral.
This morning a crew showed up, dug a whole in my yard, and repaired the part of the neutral that was bad. Now I am all back in business, and my power is behaving normally. But this has left me with a question.
I understand the imbalance, I understand why I had such a increase on one line, and a drop on the other. I am a navy trained electronics technician, so I have an understanding of transformers as well.
But my question. Does this mean that my grounding in my house is not adequate? I know I have ground, I see the copper coming in the house, and I think I have a ground plate buried in the back yard. If I lose the neutral, which as my main panel is connected to the ground, shouldn't everything work? But then there is the other side of the equation telling me that without the neutral reference from the transformer, then there is no reference to maintain balance on the two hot legs.
Sorry for the long post, but I was trying to make it easy to answer without having to have a huge amount of questions going back and forth before the was a conclusion offered.
Thank in advance
Jeremy
One more thing, I have never had a power problem before this one. No spikes, surges, or brownout.
