"blueman" wrote in message
...
"PrecisionMachinisT" writes:

Serious this time........take your reading and then take several more
readings, turning on and off some different lights, 110v breakers
etc.......

If your measured voltage goes up to near 220v in some instances and then
in
other instances down to near or at zero volts then you have a floating
neutral and you really should have someone with experience trace it down
and
fix it for you.

Usually its just the main neutral lug screw in the service has come a
bit
loose and needs tightened--generally it will be discolored and will have
kinduva darkish 'staining' to it...

BUT the problem could also be in the meter panel or even at the utility
co.
transformer.....

Best to use an analog meter for this--( in case this isn't clear to you
as
of yet ), these are typically the older meters, or in any case (
generally )
they are meters that have an actual needle rather than having an lcd
display.

SVL

Thanks -- as pointed out in another post, I ended up tracing problem
back to loose wire nut (that was just installed by a licensed
electrician no less).

I hope that this explains everything, including the dimly lit compact
flourescent, so that there are no other problems I need to look for
now that everything seems to be fixed and working properly.

Interesting about the Analog meter -- my parents were going through
some of my childhood stuff and found my circa 1974 20+ range Archer
multimeter (there were no digital ones then). I would have thrown it
out other than for sentimental reasons, though it sounds now like I
should keep it!

Suggest do the testing as I described anyways just to be certain--though I
havent followed this thread completely and so its unclear to me what you did
find as the cause.

But yes I do prefer to use the older meters. I dont much care for having to
de-cipher phantom readings, or having deal with a scale value that won't
settle in to some reading that actually makes sense...with an older meter,
the needle generally swings into position reliably and repeatably.

--

SVL