surge fried the frig

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rickl

Senior Member
i just got off the phone with a customer that i wired his 3500 sf house, 2 month's ago. the Refrigerator circuit board got fried do to a voltage surge
( thats what the refrigerator tech told the ho). this isn't weather related. the only thing i can think of is the heat pump ( right now when it starts all the lights dim). the frig circuit is a dedicated 20 amp, 320 amp underground service, 2 - 200 amp qo panels, transformor is about 75' away, house voltage is 125-250 volt read from a fluke meter. the heat pump is fed with # 6 and is about 45' from panel, nameplate 40 amp ?
question 1 is there a soft starter (or something) for the heat pump to reduce the inrush of current at starting & stopping the lights from dimming.
question 2 would a surge protector help in this situation.
question 3 could the tech be lying about voltage surge and just have a bad board & trying to point the blame on somebody else.
i would be able to get to the house until this weekend to look thing over, thank for your help
 
brian john

brian john

Senior Member
Location
Leesburg, VA
rickl said:
i just got off the phone with a customer that i wired his 3500 sf house, 2 month's ago. the Refrigerator circuit board got fried do to a voltage surge ( thats what the refrigerator tech told the ho).
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Refrig techs know about as much about this as Well NO ONE.......That's like asking the plumber about your heart.

Refrigerator 101, If is is fried it is a surge, can you say surge?

Refrigerator 102, if someones disproves surge say bad ground. Insist electrician installed a non UL listed ground rod.

Oh this is the same lessons taught in Home Theater, sound and electronic tech schools


this isn't weather related. the only thing i can think of is the heat pump ( right now when it starts all the lights dim). the frig circuit is a dedicated 20 amp, 320 amp underground service, 2 - 200 amp qo panels, transformor is about 75' away, house voltage is 125-250 volt read from a fluke meter. the heat pump is fed with # 6 and is about 45' from panel, nameplate 40 amp ?
question 1 is there a soft starter (or something) for the heat pump to reduce the inrush of current at starting & stopping the lights from dimming.
question 2 would a surge protector help in this situation.
question 3 could the tech be lying about voltage surge and just have a bad board & trying to point the blame on somebody else.
i would be able to get to the house until this weekend to look thing over, thank for your help
Click to expand...

Installing surge protection can only be a plus
 
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electricalperson

electricalperson

Senior Member
Location
massachusetts
if it was a surge wouldnt all of the other loads in the house be effected? i dont believe a heat pumps current draw will cause a fridge to break if the voltage drops to 105 - 110 for a second or 2
 
electricalperson

electricalperson

Senior Member
Location
massachusetts
a lot of techs say the reason for there equipment to fail is because of a surge. no matter what happens it always comes down to a surge caused it to break, never caused by bad equipment. always the electricians fault
 
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wireman71

Senior Member
Fridge should still be under warranty. I'm betting the local appliance store is trying to not warranty replace it but sell them a new one.

Heat pump comes on and lights dim on a 320amp service(ie:400) Maybe some peeps here with more experience will let you know what they think but I don't think the lights should be dimming from it starting. I wonder about the POCO capacity and connectionst to this residence..
 
stickboy1375

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
wireman71 said:
Heat pump comes on and lights dim on a 320amp service(ie:400) Maybe some peeps here with more experience will let you know what they think but I don't think the lights should be dimming from it starting. I wonder about the POCO capacity and connectionst to this residence..
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I'm curious why you think the lights wont dim with the start up of a heatpump?
Its a motor, and that motor will cause a voltage drop, some people can notice voltage drop better than others, I think women in general have better eye sight for this type of thing, but in any case you will always have lights dimming with the startup of a motor.
 
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LawnGuyLandSparky

Senior Member
stickboy1375 said:
I'm curious why you think the lights wont dim with the start up of a heatpump?
Its a motor, and that motor will cause a voltage drop, some people can notice voltage drop better than others, I think women in general have better eye sight for this type of thing, but in any case you will always have lights dimming with the startup of a motor.
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I don't thing gender determines keen senses. It's just that women worry, and men just stare at the TV. "Honey, the lights just dimmed and the refrigerator is out." "Oh you're in the refrigerator? Get me a beer..." :grin:
 
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haskindm

Senior Member
Location
Maryland
Voltage surge is the new catch phrase for any appliance problem. I recently bought a new washer/dryer with electronic controls. After about 2-weeks the dryer quit. When we finally got a repairman out he claimed that the electronics board had been damaged by a voltage surge. I explained to him that I knew a little about electricity and asked him to explain why the dryer failed due to this surge and not the washer, or the microwave, or the electronic controls on the range, or the television, or the computer, or the TV sets, or the electronic thermostat controls, or the wireless computer network or any of the other "sensitive electronic equipment" in the house that supposedly would have experienced this mysterious "surge". He then went on to show his absolute brilliance by explaining that there were two "boards" in the dryer and there was no way to determine which was bad, so he would need to replace both of them. It turned out that one board was not readily available, so we had to wait for several weeks for the "back-ordered" board to come in which may or may not have been the problem. After this experience, if an appliance repairman told me that the grass is green, I would need to check it myself. Ignore anything told to you by the appliance guy, he is just blowing smoke and repeating what he heard someone else say.
 
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Lxnxjxhx

Guest
surge fried the frig

Back before I blew the whistle on my employer, I designed electronics. I would have designed my stuff to "reasonably" withstand surges that would likely occur in the device's intended environment.
But I wasn't a "player". I think Game Theory would have manufacturers purposely and necessarily making their electronics only minimally robust as long as they can blame failures on something else.
In law, there is "implied merchantability"; that is, this gadget will perform reasonably well within its intended environment, and not fail for reasons that the manufacturer could have "reasonably foreseen". But the manufacturer can say, "so, sue me." See how far you get with that.
I had to work in a hardware store for a while after the above "whistle" event. I have never seen or sold a surge protector that published statistical data on how many failures your computer had before, and would have after, installing this gadget. Besides, the switching power supply within a computer, by its design, can inherently squash some serious transients. And toasters without computers in them certainly don't care about transients.
One time I called the power company with a technical question; in Maryland the voltage is supposed to stay between 114v and 126 v. But even the receptionist knew, and told me, that the power company is under no obligation regarding the quality of the power that they supply. Political power, not electrical power, speaks volumes.
The only thing that talks nowadays is a lawsuit, or you don't buy stuff with fragile electronics. I have a dishwasher in my basement that hardly lasted two years (it does not have an electromechanical timer) and I am going to design and build my own controller for less money that it takes to replace the "defective" circuit boards.
 
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stickboy1375

stickboy1375

Senior Member
Location
Litchfield, CT
LawnGuyLandSparky said:
I don't thing gender determines keen senses. It's just that women worry, and men just stare at the TV. "Honey, the lights just dimmed and the refrigerator is out." "Oh you're in the refrigerator? Get me a beer..." :grin:
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Simply awesome answer.... :grin:
 
petersonra

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
If service techs are to be believed, the main causes of mysterious failures are surges, noise and bad grounds. Its never something that was a factory defect, or just a random failure.
 
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LawnGuyLandSparky

Senior Member
stickboy1375 said:
And always point the blame to the guy that is not there... :grin:
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Or to the thing you cannot wrap your hands around and strangle... :grin:
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brian john

brian john

Senior Member
Location
Leesburg, VA
From the Peninsula Light Company web site.

A surge occurs when the power line voltage goes higher than nominal, and stays there longer than 10 milliseconds. The three main forms of power interference include: voltage dips, electromagnetic interference and surges.




Light flicker (dimming and restoration of light to near pre-flicker level) of lights from motor inrush) is a byproduct of several factors and generally is difficult to over come.

AC motor loads (in particular compressors) but all motor loads have inrush currents. These inrush currents result in voltage drop in the branch circuit, panel bus, service laterals, utility transformer and possibility the utility HV feeders.

Flicker is in addition user dependent; some people are more susceptible to flicker. For some reason flicker seems to bother women more that men (based upon personal experience).

A Voltage Drop (VD) as little as 3 volts on a nominal 120 VAC system is noticeable (by me), 2.5% VD.

We have had cases were the VD was all a byproduct of primarily single phase 120 VAC loads, in these cases we were able to put the lighting on L1 and all the motor loads on L2, the HVAC compressors were something the homeowner had to live with. This minimizes the flicker.


To test for this VD and resulting flicker to determine the source of the inrush, use a min max amp clamp and min max multimeter at the main service watch the lights(it may take two workers) and correlate to the meters.
 
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76nemo

76nemo

Senior Member
Location
Ogdensburg, NY
With Brian

With Brian

I am with Brian on this. Why can't you move your loads around to different legs to meet a balance? As far as board level and surge destruction, most boards are designed with MOV's and can be an easy field fix. The whole, "Well, it was taken out by a surge", is a crock for the most part. The OP has a 400A service and the heat pump is causing the lights to dim??? The design was laid out incorrectly.

This shouldn't be a head scratcher.
 
R

rickl

Senior Member
(Why can't you move your loads around to different legs to meet a balance?)
this is a 3500 sq house, 2-200amp single phase panel tied together at the 320 meterbase, i only have 2 legs , the heat pump is 240 volt and at startup the inrush current is 3 to 5 times the fla, which is causing the lights to dim, they only dim when the heat pump starts, so moving loads around will not make a different, actually most of my lighting circuits are not in the same panel as the heat pump
(The OP has a 400A service and the heat pump is causing the lights to dim??? The design was laid out incorrectly.)
school me, how would you design this house so the lights don't dim. i would really like to know, at my house when my heat pumps starts my lights & my neighbors lights dim ( shared transformer) & i didn't wire my neighbors house.

(The design was laid out incorrectly.) that statement really pissed me off how can you make that assessment sitting in front of your computer 1000 miles away.
 
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