"tysteel" wrote

The other night the electricity suddenly blacked out on one side of
the house, after turning on a 1500 watt space heater. I then checked
out the main breaker box to see what had tripped. But after checking
the breakers, none of them looked like they had tripped.

First thought here, you overloaded the 100 amp service when it kicked in.

So while it hadn't visually tripped, I decided to switch the breaker
off, and then switch it back on. I then looked over at the house,
and noticed that all lights were back on in the side that had blacked
out. Switching this breaker on and off had a reset effect.

As I was walking back to the house, the electricity flickered out
again. I turned around and walked back to the electric meter and then

Looks to me like first thought still.


switched the breaker on and off again. When I switched it on, I could
hear a sort of sizzling noise. The electricity was back on.. But
the electricity only stayed on for about an hour or so and then the
ENTIRE house blacked out. It was like that for the rest of the
cold night.

And may have damaged the external box in one of the 'hits' possibly here?

think that if I do need to replace the breaker under the meter, I'll
have to hire an electrician to do that work. But before calling

Call your electrical company first. Sometimes the external boxes belong to
them and they fix them for you. If the box is bad and it wasnt caused by
trying to run over 100amps through it, they might fix for free if they 'own'
the box. Happened to me in a rental once that the exterior box went out and
was a free fix. It was not caused by any overload (yours may not be either
and just happenstance that it looked a bit like it to me).