Happy New Year to everyone! I have an electical probem that's a little
bit of a mystery to me. We moved into our house 2 years ago and just
recently the electrical outlet for the washer started to drop voltage
under load. I have seemed to fix the problem but am not sure of the
exact cause.

The outlet will start out at 120v AC and then when the washer is
started, the voltage drops to 40-60v. If I reset the breaker, the
voltage will return to 120v until load is placed on the circuit again.
This is a recent problem that has occurred without any changes to the
wiring, electrical load, etc. For two years, the outlet on the washer
worked fine.

In tracing this problem, I found that the receptacle was a 15A, but the
breaker and wiring was 20A. When I replaced the 15A receptacle with
another 15A receptacle, the problem persisted. When I replaced the
receptacle with a 20A one and also replaced the breaker it seems to be
working now. Any ideas to what the problem is and why it has only
shown up recently?

Thanks in advance,

Herb