On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Jim Witte
wrote:
We've had a problem for the past year or so where every so often one
circuit in our house starts to brown-out intermittantly. This circuit is
the newest one in the house, and I believe was inserted on it's own
breaker. In addition to the brown-outs, evidenced by light flickering as
well as phone, TV and VCR turning on and off sometimes (one can hear some
relay in the TV clicking repeatedly), a static-like noise can be heard
coming from the breaker.

An electrician told us that the problem was corrosion in the breaker or
in the wireing in the entire electrical box, which showed up first on the
grounding strip. He said that to fix it the entire box would have to be
rewired, but that there *wasn't* any risk of an electrical fire.

The odd thing is that it ONLY occurs with this one circuit, and that if
all the lights on the circuit (about 260W load) are turned on, the
brown-outs will go away in about 10 seconds. If they are turned off, the
problem comes back, but if left on for about half and hour, the problem
seem to clear up (at least for anywhere between a day to six weeks).

Now for the questions: Why would current flowing through the circuit
seem to stabilize it (reverseing the corrosion to some degree, or causing
changes in the wire metal which temporarily bypasses the resistance
created by the corrosion?) Is there really no risk of electrical fire?
Why would it only occur on one circuit, if the entire box had corrosion
in it?

Obviously something is not making good contact. The buzz is something
arcing trying to make contact, and higher or prolonged current is heating
something up (things expand when hot), completing the circuit. That is
NOT good.

Did the electrician actually look at the box and check where the circuit
interruption is (why didn't he fix it?), or just guess over the phone?
If the latter, how would he know you didn't have an aluminum wire with an
unsuitable connector somewhere, which has been known to start fires?

--
David Efflandt - All spam ignored http://www.de-srv.com/