Are you still on the medication though. Sounds like you needed a live in
electrician with a jcb.
Brian

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From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Uncle Peter" wrote in message
news
Found the 2 below quotes by mistake when googling, relevant parts
asterisked. How on earth does connecting a 240 V load make the missing
neutral problem go away for the 120 V appliances?

I can answer this with experience. A long long time ago, (about 1987) we
experience some weird happenings with our lights and whole house fan. The
whole house fan is what tipped us off to the problem initially. It all of
a
sudden just slowed down. Some lights were bright, some were dim. The TV
would not come on. After poking around a bit, i got out the (analog)
meter
and found some outlets had about 80 volts and others had about 144.
******Then,
some how, i had the brilliant idea of turning on the oven. When i turned
the oven on, the fan went back to normal, the lights normal. The 240v
load
apparently balanced the system.****** I was at somewhat of a loss at that
point.
I was not near as experience in electrical things at that time. I called
an
electrician friend of mine, he came down, poked around in the box some and
decided to loosen the ground on the buss. "OH! GUESS WHAT? Fire on the
ground" he said. I'm like "what's that mean"?. He said "well even though
i've never seen this before, it sure looks like an open neutral. So i get
on the horn with the power company. FYI, it was Kansas City Power and
Light. They come out, and basically look at what i'm experiencing and the
first thing the guy does is pull the meter. Then he measures the voltages
on the incoming legs. All is equal. Then he tells me the problem must be
on the inside. Puts the meter back in and the imbalance returns. "yep ,
he
says, problem is on your side". So at this point, i'm at wits end, not
knowing what to do, so I calls the fire dept and they say 'do you have a
fire'? I says no, but I will, if someone does not fix this power
imbalance.
So that prompts a little higher level of action from KCPL, and they come
out
again. The service guy makes all his checks and then talks on the radio
for
a while. His supervisor says "you know that sounds like an open neutral".
The guy comes back and says they suspect an open neutral. At that point,
I
explode. I said "NO **** SHERLOCK" I told you guys that 3 hours ago.
They
ran a bare wire from my meter can to the service box on the street and lo
and behold, all becomes normal again. (did i mention i have underground
service?) They came out the next day and started digging. About a foot
from my water meter, at a depth of about 16" the neutral wire was corroded
clean in half. Apparently it had been nicked by the backhoe putting in
the
water line 10 year prior. Well anyway, they fixed the wire, and all was
good for exactly a year to the day. It was so weird, one year later, HALF
the stuff in the house quit working. I had a dead leg. When they came
out,
i explained what had happened the year before and so they dug again. Sure
enough, about 2 feet from the neutral problem, one of the hot legs had
corroded in half.

After screwing around with it, I decided the drill was
dying and went to get another one from the back room. That room is
dark so I flipped on the lights. They were real dim. That's when I
realized there might be an electrical problem. I took that drill to
the house and it worked fine. I went back to the garage and plugged
it into another outlet. As soon as I turned it on, those dim lights
in the back room got real bright, and a few seconds later they went
out (they were CFL bulbs). thats when something smelled hot, and I
found smoke around one of those CFL bulbs. I shot off the switch to
those lights and got my test meter. I got odd votages all over the
garage. I flipped on a light on another breaker and it flashed and
burned out immediately. At that same time the radio in there which
always comes on when I turn on the lights, got real loud, then quit.
******I flipped on my 240V welder and it worked fine. At the same time I
noticed the outdoor flood light came on. With the welder on, I
flipped on soem more lights and they all worked normally. When I shut
off the welder some lights got real dim, others real bright.******

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I took my Biology exam last Friday. I was asked to name two things
commonly found in cells. Apparently "Blacks" and "Scousers" were not the
correct answers.