My compliments. It sounds as though you did a nice job on your service
upgrade. I am happy to hear that you got a permit and had the job
inspected. If you had not replaced the Federal Pacific (AKA Fire Trap
Electric) panel I would have suggested that you start there.

A loose connection might be the problem. You could double check your work
in the service panel, but more likely you may have a loose connection
somewhere in your interior wiring. After 35 years don't expect everything
to be tight. You only need to torque down your aluminum service conductors
every few years.

Something else to consider at this time of year (Summer) are brownouts.
Your power company may be cutting back the volts a little to save their
equipment from overload.

I don't know what kind of appliances and equipment you have in your home,
but I have seen the same effect from office copy machines and laser
printers. I forget exactly what inside those machines causes that, but it
is a fairly well know trait. While they are on they do some sort of
internal cycling from time to time and it causes lights on the same circuit
to blink for a moment.

I suppose that it is possible if your neighbors had some high current
equipment going on and off that you would feel the effects. If that turns
out to be the case, then the power company may need to upgrade their
transformer feeding your house.

Also a loose connection at the transformer is possible and if your neighbors
have the same problem as you call the power company.


Good luck.

John Grabowski
http://www.mrelectrician.tv




"Mike O." wrote in message
om...
Last May, I replaced/upgraded our service panel, meter base, etc. from
the 35 year old Federal Pacific 100A panel to a 200Amp SquareD Q0
series. The service entrance cable running down the house to the
meter pan, then to the service panel in the basement was replaced with
4-0 Aluminum SE cable. I used NoAlOx, worked into the conductors with
a stainless steel brush, and torqued the connections down to the value
listed on the panel and meter box. The lugs are rated for Copper or
Aluminum conductors.

I did get a permit, and the installation was inspected and approved
before the electric company re-attached the overhead lines.

Assuming I did everything correctly, once an aluminum service entrance
cable is installed, do the connections periodically need checked and
tightened? If so, would the two months since the installation be
enough for them to have worked loose? Everything else in the house is
copper; this is the first time I've worked with AL wiring.

The reason I'm asking is that a few times a day our lights flicker.
It's only a fraction of a second or so, the kind of effect you get
when something high current powers up (hair drier, etc.) It's similar
to, but much shorter than the effect when our A/C starts. It isn't a
consistent time and it doesn't seem to coorespond with any item in our
house starting up. I think it just started in the last couple of
weeks, but it may be that I just noticed it. They get dimmer, not
brighter, so I don't think it's a floating neutral. I've noticed it on
two or three different circuits.

There are several houses off of the same pole mounted transformer and
I'm going to check with the neighbors to see if they are experiencing
similar things. We moved in last fall, so we weren't here last
summer; it may be normal for our neighborhood when everybody's running
the A/C and stuff.

I've tried various newsgroup and web searches and have found some
info, but nothing that seems to fit my situation. Most of the
comments point either to a loose connection (which prompted this
message), the pole transformer, or the problems associated with
aluminmum wiring inside the house.

Since I just did the work recently, I wanted to try to eliminate all
that I could before I contact the power company.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Mike O.