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Electronics Repair (sci.electronics.repair) Discussion of repairing electronic equipment. Topics include requests for assistance, where to obtain servicing information and parts, techniques for diagnosis and repair, and annecdotes about success, failures and problems. |
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#1
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Hi,
I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. |
#3
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Thanks Sam.
Well, at least one hasn't failed -- just fixed the satellite box -- but rest are dead. I'll get an engineer in. We bought a new fridge and freezer in the last couple of weeks but never thought they could be causing this. I think I need to get it all checked out. Hadn't noticed the lights but it could well be the case that they dim. And at least I have something else to be paranoid obsessed about tonight.... ;o) Sam Goldwasser wrote: writes: Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) Just because you might be paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. 6 items in a week is probably not chance. There is something going on. Has anyone determined how they failed? My guess would be high line voltage or line voltage spikes. Check the AC line voltage on the circuits where these devices were. It's possible there is an open Neutral or a bad connection to the Neutral resulting in excessive AC voltage on some circuits. Do you experience unusual dimming, or more significantly, brightening of lights when a load kicks in like a fridge or A/C compressor? The latter would be an indication of a Neutral problem. --- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/ Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/ +Lasers | Sam's Laser FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm | Mirror Sites: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_mirror.html Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs. |
#4
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Sam Goldwasser wrote: It's possible there is an open Neutral or a bad connection to the Neutral resulting in excessive AC voltage on some circuits. He's in the UK not the USA so you can rule out that problem. We don't have centre tapped 240V. Graham |
#5
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
wrote in message oups.com... Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. Do you by any chance live in a village with old overhead PMR mains supply ? Just a thought as a friend of mine suffered a virtually identical problem to this, which ultimately turned out to be an intermittent neutral connection, as someone else has suggested, back at the pole mounted transformer. This was apparently resulting in the mains intermittently shooting up to phase-phase voltage of 440v. I'm not sufficiently au fait with how power distribution networks work, to tell you exactly how this occurs, but when the electricity board came out and sorted this problem, the multiple equipment failures stopped. Arfa |
#6
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Arfa Daily wrote:
wrote in message oups.com... Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. Do you by any chance live in a village with old overhead PMR mains supply ? Just a thought as a friend of mine suffered a virtually identical problem to this, which ultimately turned out to be an intermittent neutral connection, as someone else has suggested, back at the pole mounted transformer. This was apparently resulting in the mains intermittently shooting up to phase-phase voltage of 440v. I'm not sufficiently au fait with how power distribution networks work, to tell you exactly how this occurs, but when the electricity board came out and sorted this problem, the multiple equipment failures stopped. Arfa AFAIK nothing like that, Arfa. Like Graham said, I'm in the UK. Medium-sized town. Nothing out of the ordinary. This might sound really dumb, but I wondered if a spike could get around surge protectors, via something like a cable modem... |
#7
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:26:45 +0100, Eeyore
wrote: Sam Goldwasser wrote: It's possible there is an open Neutral or a bad connection to the Neutral resulting in excessive AC voltage on some circuits. He's in the UK not the USA so you can rule out that problem. We don't have centre tapped 240V. That's no guarantee at all. I'm not an expert in power distribution, but a failing neutral can wreak havoc even without centre tap. His 240 volts are likely to be one leg of a 380 or 400 volts 3-phase system. Kill it's neutral and the lights all shine. Briefly :-) -- Kind regards, Gerard Bok |
#8
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Most likely electrical problems in the house, causing voltage spiking.
This should be checked out by a specialist in analysing electrical problems. The power company should be equiped with the proper equipment to do these types of tests. Jerry G. wrote: Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. |
#9
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
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#10
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
In article ,
Gerard Bok wrote: His 240 volts are likely to be one leg of a 380 or 400 volts 3-phase system. Kill it's neutral and the lights all shine. Briefly :-) How? Remove the neutral and you have no current flow in a single phase system like all houses in the UK have. You only get your '380 or 400 volts' between phases in a three phase installation. -- *A bicycle can't stand alone because it's two tyred.* Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#11
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article , Gerard Bok wrote: His 240 volts are likely to be one leg of a 380 or 400 volts 3-phase system. Kill it's neutral and the lights all shine. Briefly :-) How? Remove the neutral and you have no current flow in a single phase system like all houses in the UK have. You only get your '380 or 400 volts' between phases in a three phase installation. Yes but remember that electricity is often distributed as far as your street in 3 phase - your house might be on L1, the next house on L2 and the next L3. Of course, losing the neutral connection WITHIN YOUR HOUSE will not cause an overvoltage situation, simply a power failure. However, losing the neutral further up the distribution system e.g. at the pole transformer or substation could cause overvoltage because the neutrals of all the houses will still be commoned together and the houses are not all fed from the same phase. Therefore you could have 415V across yours and your neighbours house installations, the common neutral serving as the link. What you now have is a potential divider in electronics terms and unless both houses had absolutely identical appliance loading, one house is going to get a greater share of the voltage than the other possibly resulting in damage to appliances. -- Tim Phipps replace "invalid" with "uk" to reply by email |
#12
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
wrote in message oups.com... Arfa Daily wrote: wrote in message oups.com... Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. Do you by any chance live in a village with old overhead PMR mains supply ? Just a thought as a friend of mine suffered a virtually identical problem to this, which ultimately turned out to be an intermittent neutral connection, as someone else has suggested, back at the pole mounted transformer. This was apparently resulting in the mains intermittently shooting up to phase-phase voltage of 440v. I'm not sufficiently au fait with how power distribution networks work, to tell you exactly how this occurs, but when the electricity board came out and sorted this problem, the multiple equipment failures stopped. Arfa AFAIK nothing like that, Arfa. Like Graham said, I'm in the UK. Medium-sized town. Nothing out of the ordinary. This might sound really dumb, but I wondered if a spike could get around surge protectors, via something like a cable modem... Yes, this was in the UK too - hence the 440v phase-phase. Many villages still have overhead distribution PME systems in use, which is why I was querying the point. Pole mounted transformers are not the exclusive preserve of power distribution in the US. Until a couple of years back, when it was finally put underground, the farm behind me was fed from an 11kV pole mounted transformer at the bottom of my neighbour's garden. Another poster further up the thread, has explained exactly how the neutral problem can occur, even with modern underground and substations, so it's still quite possible that this is the cause of your problem. Arfa |
#13
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Arfa Daily wrote:
wrote in message oups.com... Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. Do you by any chance live in a village with old overhead PMR mains supply ? Just a thought as a friend of mine suffered a virtually identical problem to this, which ultimately turned out to be an intermittent neutral connection, as someone else has suggested, back at the pole mounted transformer. This was apparently resulting in the mains intermittently shooting up to phase-phase voltage of 440v. I'm not sufficiently au fait with how power distribution networks work, to tell you exactly how this occurs, but when the electricity board came out and sorted this problem, the multiple equipment failures stopped. My first impression was to ask how the weather had been the last week or two; but since he's in England...no need. G jak Arfa |
#14
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
wrote:
Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. surge protectors do not always help. if you had a near hit of a thunder shower the EMF from it can have been induced to cause the speakers to fail since the speakers have a magnetic coil in it and could have absorbed too much EMF, but since lightning is a rather short burst i would not say that is it,.. the other problem could be a loss of ground from your service causing items that are plugged in to get twice as much voltage as it should or some one has recently done some rewiring in the house and has the lines backwards! -- Real Programmers Do things like this. http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5 |
#15
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
"jakdedert" wrote in message .. . Arfa Daily wrote: wrote in message oups.com... Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. Do you by any chance live in a village with old overhead PMR mains supply ? Just a thought as a friend of mine suffered a virtually identical problem to this, which ultimately turned out to be an intermittent neutral connection, as someone else has suggested, back at the pole mounted transformer. This was apparently resulting in the mains intermittently shooting up to phase-phase voltage of 440v. I'm not sufficiently au fait with how power distribution networks work, to tell you exactly how this occurs, but when the electricity board came out and sorted this problem, the multiple equipment failures stopped. My first impression was to ask how the weather had been the last week or two; but since he's in England...no need. G jak Arfa Oh Jak ! That's below the belt ! For the last couple of weeks, the weather here has been glorious ... d;~} Arfa |
#16
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote: My first impression was to ask how the weather had been the last week or two; but since he's in England...no need. G Oh Jak ! That's below the belt ! For the last couple of weeks, the weather here has been glorious ... d;~} Might have been in your part of England, but not throughout. ;-) -- *Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects * Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#17
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
Arfa Daily wrote:
"jakdedert" wrote in message .. . Arfa Daily wrote: wrote in message oups.com... Hi, I have no experience of this sort of thing, so excuse the naivety of my question... In the course of the last few days, our house has experienced at least six electrical items failing. This includes a network router and a set of speakers, both of which stopped working sometime during Sunday night. Countless other devices have failed since then, including a Sky+ satellite box, an electric fly catcher, a wall heater... I know all this could just be bad luck and we're seeing a pattern where there isn't one, but could there be anything that could have caused these apparently unrelated faults? We use surge protectors to protect our computers, yet the speakers and network router failed at some point in the middle of the night. Again, apologies if this sounds naive but I'd like to know if I'm just being paranoid before I call an engineer in to chase these ghosts... :-) TIA, Jerry. Do you by any chance live in a village with old overhead PMR mains supply ? Just a thought as a friend of mine suffered a virtually identical problem to this, which ultimately turned out to be an intermittent neutral connection, as someone else has suggested, back at the pole mounted transformer. This was apparently resulting in the mains intermittently shooting up to phase-phase voltage of 440v. I'm not sufficiently au fait with how power distribution networks work, to tell you exactly how this occurs, but when the electricity board came out and sorted this problem, the multiple equipment failures stopped. My first impression was to ask how the weather had been the last week or two; but since he's in England...no need. G jak Arfa Oh Jak ! That's below the belt ! For the last couple of weeks, the weather here has been glorious ... d;~} You mean the sky was a lighter shade of gray? g Actually, I have experienced some very nice weather in Blighty...one afternoon. jak Arfa |
#18
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
In article ,
jakdedert wrote: Oh Jak ! That's below the belt ! For the last couple of weeks, the weather here has been glorious ... d;~} You mean the sky was a lighter shade of gray? g Actually, I have experienced some very nice weather in Blighty...one afternoon. But we have proof of the current weather. Wimbledon tennis. Normally rained off, but only on Monday so far this year. -- *He who laughs last has just realised the joke. Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. |
#19
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... In article , jakdedert wrote: Oh Jak ! That's below the belt ! For the last couple of weeks, the weather here has been glorious ... d;~} You mean the sky was a lighter shade of gray? g Actually, I have experienced some very nice weather in Blighty...one afternoon. But we have proof of the current weather. Wimbledon tennis. Normally rained off, but only on Monday so far this year. -- *He who laughs last has just realised the joke. Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. Its unbearably hot - even when I went for a blast on the motorcycle!!! |
#20
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Reasons for devices failing throughout the house
"ian field" wrote in message ... "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message ... In article , jakdedert wrote: Oh Jak ! That's below the belt ! For the last couple of weeks, the weather here has been glorious ... d;~} You mean the sky was a lighter shade of gray? g Actually, I have experienced some very nice weather in Blighty...one afternoon. But we have proof of the current weather. Wimbledon tennis. Normally rained off, but only on Monday so far this year. -- *He who laughs last has just realised the joke. Dave Plowman London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound. Its unbearably hot - even when I went for a blast on the motorcycle!!! Hotter Sunday, and yet hotter Monday so they say. My weather sat piccies are showing a frontal system out to the west, but not too much movement or activity on it yet ... Arfa |
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