Ignoramus18851 wrote:

There are some intermittent problems at home related to me starting my
RPC. It is beginning to affect my marriagee.

1. A TV once turned off

2. At another time, our kitchen oven, where me and my son placed some
cookies to bake, went crazy and went into a cleaning mode and burned
the cookies.

I suspect that it is so because the main 10 HP motor takes a
comparatively long time (1-2 seconds) to spin up, and draws about 120
amps during this time.

I am considering adding some capacitance to increase its starting
speed, but would like to double check if this is a step in the right
direction. I would turn these caps off after the motor comes up to
speed.

thanks

i

Sounds like you have an excuse to upgrade your electrical service. The
problem isn't your RPC, that's a perfectly normal home shop item, the
problem is your inadequate electrical service.

Tell the SO that your glad the RPC has pointed out the potentially
dangerous deficiencies of the homes electrical service so you can
upgrade to 400A service before there is a fire or something.

Pete C.

Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus18851 wrote:


There are some intermittent problems at home related to me starting my
RPC. It is beginning to affect my marriagee.

1. A TV once turned off

2. At another time, our kitchen oven, where me and my son placed some
cookies to bake, went crazy and went into a cleaning mode and burned
the cookies.

I suspect that it is so because the main 10 HP motor takes a
comparatively long time (1-2 seconds) to spin up, and draws about 120
amps during this time.

I am considering adding some capacitance to increase its starting
speed, but would like to double check if this is a step in the right
direction. I would turn these caps off after the motor comes up to
speed.

thanks

i



Sounds like you have an excuse to upgrade your electrical service. The
problem isn't your RPC, that's a perfectly normal home shop item, the
problem is your inadequate electrical service.

Tell the SO that your glad the RPC has pointed out the potentially
dangerous deficiencies of the homes electrical service so you can
upgrade to 400A service before there is a fire or something.


Well, actually, that isn't so ridiculous. My dad remarried about 15
years ago,
and they were having problems in her house, with lights going out and then
coming back on later. I said that sounded serious, call your
electrician. The
licensed. professional electrician
said it was "normal, nothing you could do"! I said, "wow, you need a new
electrician!" My dad didn't want to believe me, then his next-door
neighbor,
who is an EE, agreed, in much stronger terms. Well, nothing happened until
I got a chance to visit. I pulled the cover off the electrical panel,
and many
of the wires were so loose in the breakers you could just pull them striaght
OUT! Yikes! So, I retorqued all the hold-down screws, and there were no
further problems. EVERY screw in the panel was loose.

If Igor has a reasonably-rated electrical service, this could be the
same problem.
Anyway, that is something he can check. And, if he has anything less than
a 100 A service, he really is not going to be able to run a 10 Hp idler
motor.
With typical house loads running, you really don't want any less than a 200
A service to run this kind of equipment.

Jon

Jon Elson wrote:




Well, actually, that isn't so ridiculous. My dad remarried about 15
years ago,
and they were having problems in her house, with lights going out and
then
coming back on later. I said that sounded serious, call your
electrician. The
licensed. professional electrician
said it was "normal, nothing you could do"! I said, "wow, you need a new
electrician!" My dad didn't want to believe me, then his next-door
neighbor,
who is an EE, agreed, in much stronger terms. Well, nothing happened
until
I got a chance to visit. I pulled the cover off the electrical panel,
and many
of the wires were so loose in the breakers you could just pull them
striaght
OUT! Yikes! So, I retorqued all the hold-down screws, and there were no
further problems. EVERY screw in the panel was loose.

If Igor has a reasonably-rated electrical service, this could be the
same problem.
Anyway, that is something he can check. And, if he has anything less
than
a 100 A service, he really is not going to be able to run a 10 Hp
idler motor.
With typical house loads running, you really don't want any less than
a 200
A service to run this kind of equipment.

Jon

We had classic loose neutral symptoms--the microwave starts and the
kitchen lights got *lots* brighter. I measured a peak of 135V (on the
other side of the box) when the microwave turned on. It was when I was
headed for the power drop on the pole with my DVM that my wife put her
foot down and said to call an electrician.

I was at work when he came. My wife said that he poked around here and
there, spent a lot of time talking with his helper by the truck, then
left. I talked to him later and he explained that the problem could be
anywhere, we might have to rewire the whole house. Can't we isolate the
problem? Nope, no way to do that. Then he says (referring to the fan
motor in the microwave) "You know, motors are funny things, they have
memory. I bet if you just wait a few weeks, the problem will go away.".
I immediately called his boss. His boss said "sounds like a loose
neutral". He offered to come out that evening (Friday yet). He finally
found it--the neutral drop on the pole was loose in its screw. The screw
was corroded in place, doing a good imitation of being tight.

Steve

Could be also - you have a 200 amp box - and share a transformer with 3 other houses -
each with 200 amp boxes. The pole (example only) can supply 400 amp max - and never
expects to see more - much less 800 amps. Now the neighbor installs an electric heater.
Another installs a monster TV and ... another adds a pool pump and a spa...
So the transformer might be on the edge and you brown out the transformer!

I'd take off the panel cover and verify the mains screws - carefully.

Martin
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder


Ignoramus18851 wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:56:39 -0500, Steve Smith wrote:


Jon Elson wrote:



Well, actually, that isn't so ridiculous. My dad remarried about 15
years ago,
and they were having problems in her house, with lights going out and
then
coming back on later. I said that sounded serious, call your
electrician. The
licensed. professional electrician
said it was "normal, nothing you could do"! I said, "wow, you need a new
electrician!" My dad didn't want to believe me, then his next-door
neighbor,
who is an EE, agreed, in much stronger terms. Well, nothing happened
until
I got a chance to visit. I pulled the cover off the electrical panel,
and many
of the wires were so loose in the breakers you could just pull them
striaght
OUT! Yikes! So, I retorqued all the hold-down screws, and there were no
further problems. EVERY screw in the panel was loose.

If Igor has a reasonably-rated electrical service, this could be the
same problem.
Anyway, that is something he can check. And, if he has anything less
than
a 100 A service, he really is not going to be able to run a 10 Hp
idler motor.
With typical house loads running, you really don't want any less than
a 200
A service to run this kind of equipment.

Jon


We had classic loose neutral symptoms--the microwave starts and the
kitchen lights got *lots* brighter. I measured a peak of 135V (on the
other side of the box) when the microwave turned on. It was when I was
headed for the power drop on the pole with my DVM that my wife put her
foot down and said to call an electrician.

I was at work when he came. My wife said that he poked around here and
there, spent a lot of time talking with his helper by the truck, then
left. I talked to him later and he explained that the problem could be
anywhere, we might have to rewire the whole house. Can't we isolate the
problem? Nope, no way to do that. Then he says (referring to the fan
motor in the microwave) "You know, motors are funny things, they have
memory. I bet if you just wait a few weeks, the problem will go away.".
I immediately called his boss. His boss said "sounds like a loose
neutral". He offered to come out that evening (Friday yet). He finally
found it--the neutral drop on the pole was loose in its screw. The screw
was corroded in place, doing a good imitation of being tight.


That's a nice story. In my case though, the RPC runs on 220V, so
neutral is not a big deal aside from the control circuit. Loose hot
mains wires at the power panel could possibly (but not very likely)
account for dimming lights.

i


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In article ,
Jon Elson wrote:

Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus18851 wrote:


There are some intermittent problems at home related to me starting my
RPC. It is beginning to affect my marriagee.

1. A TV once turned off

2. At another time, our kitchen oven, where me and my son placed some
cookies to bake, went crazy and went into a cleaning mode and burned
the cookies.

I suspect that it is so because the main 10 HP motor takes a
comparatively long time (1-2 seconds) to spin up, and draws about 120
amps during this time.

I am considering adding some capacitance to increase its starting
speed, but would like to double check if this is a step in the right
direction. I would turn these caps off after the motor comes up to
speed.

thanks

i



Sounds like you have an excuse to upgrade your electrical service. The
problem isn't your RPC, that's a perfectly normal home shop item, the
problem is your inadequate electrical service.

Tell the SO that your glad the RPC has pointed out the potentially
dangerous deficiencies of the homes electrical service so you can
upgrade to 400A service before there is a fire or something.


Well, actually, that isn't so ridiculous. My dad remarried about 15
years ago,
and they were having problems in her house, with lights going out and then
coming back on later. I said that sounded serious, call your
electrician. The
licensed. professional electrician
said it was "normal, nothing you could do"! I said, "wow, you need a new
electrician!" My dad didn't want to believe me, then his next-door
neighbor,
who is an EE, agreed, in much stronger terms. Well, nothing happened until
I got a chance to visit. I pulled the cover off the electrical panel,
and many
of the wires were so loose in the breakers you could just pull them striaght
OUT! Yikes! So, I retorqued all the hold-down screws, and there were no
further problems. EVERY screw in the panel was loose.

This happened to a boss of mine in the 1970s, in the suburbs of
Washington, DC. He complained of weird interactions between circuits
that ought to be independent, which suggested bad ground to me. So I
visited his house one saturday. It turned out that the electrician's
helper had never gotten around to tightening all the screws down onto
the wires; nothing was tight. It worked at first, then the wires gained
a little corrosion.

Many years later I went to a summer stock theater that my kid sister was
in, held outside at a local school. While waiting for things to start,
in the late afternoon, I'm idly looking at the lighting setup (I used to
work theater lighting). Then I notice how *blue* the light from some of
the unfiltered stage lights seem. Blue? How do you do that - it takes
overvoltage. Hmm. They will have a three-wire 220-volt feed; the
neutral must be open. How else could this happen? So I went to the
director and asked him if he had been having problems with lamps burning
out too soon. Yes! Solid-state dimmers too. Expensive. And how did
you know? Tell blue story. We look at the cabling. Sure enough, in
one of the Edison connectors, the neutral was loose. Tighten the
screws. Director is very happy, because now he can prove that the
dimmers blew because of bad cabling supplied by the rental company, and
the rental company pays, not the director. Not exactly a damsel in
distress, but he'll have to do.

Joe Gwinn

Ignoramus18851 wrote:

That's a nice story. In my case though, the RPC runs on 220V, so
neutral is not a big deal aside from the control circuit. Loose hot
mains wires at the power panel could possibly (but not very likely)
account for dimming lights.

i


If you have a 100 A or less service, or this problem happens when you
already have a heavy load operating, like an oven, electric clothes
dryer, etc. then there may be nothing you can do, given that service.
You noted the RPC, alone, draws 120 A at startup.

If you have a 200 A or greater service, and the problem happens when
no other heavy load is on, then there is just plain something wrong,
and it could be dangerous. A loose connection somewhere between
the transformer and breaker panel is a strong possibility.

One possible way to isolate high-resistance connections is to check
the voltage at the RPC's breaker when it is started. If the nominal
240 V dips below, say, 200 V, that indicates a lot of loss. Work
backwards toward the service entry. If the service entry drops to
about the same level as the previous measurment, then the service
has a high resistance, certainly too high for this load. If it DOESN'T
dip much, then the problem is between the service entry and the load
breaker. If you can spot some place where the voltage drop changes,
like it is OK at the service entry breaker (if present) but dips
at the main breaker panel, then the problem must be between these two
points. Some of these main connections can be very hard to work on,
such as requiring an allen wrench to tighten, so you really have to
be sure the juice is off before touching it.

Jon

I had the neutral rust out in my box in our old house, that caused many odd
things to happen. When replaced I up graded the amps to the house.
"Steve Smith" wrote in message
...


Jon Elson wrote:




Well, actually, that isn't so ridiculous. My dad remarried about 15
years ago,
and they were having problems in her house, with lights going out and
then
coming back on later. I said that sounded serious, call your
electrician. The
licensed. professional electrician
said it was "normal, nothing you could do"! I said, "wow, you need a new
electrician!" My dad didn't want to believe me, then his next-door
neighbor,
who is an EE, agreed, in much stronger terms. Well, nothing happened
until
I got a chance to visit. I pulled the cover off the electrical panel,
and many
of the wires were so loose in the breakers you could just pull them
striaght
OUT! Yikes! So, I retorqued all the hold-down screws, and there were no
further problems. EVERY screw in the panel was loose.

If Igor has a reasonably-rated electrical service, this could be the same
problem.
Anyway, that is something he can check. And, if he has anything less
than
a 100 A service, he really is not going to be able to run a 10 Hp idler
motor.
With typical house loads running, you really don't want any less than a
200
A service to run this kind of equipment.

Jon

We had classic loose neutral symptoms--the microwave starts and the
kitchen lights got *lots* brighter. I measured a peak of 135V (on the
other side of the box) when the microwave turned on. It was when I was
headed for the power drop on the pole with my DVM that my wife put her
foot down and said to call an electrician.

I was at work when he came. My wife said that he poked around here and
there, spent a lot of time talking with his helper by the truck, then
left. I talked to him later and he explained that the problem could be
anywhere, we might have to rewire the whole house. Can't we isolate the
problem? Nope, no way to do that. Then he says (referring to the fan motor
in the microwave) "You know, motors are funny things, they have memory. I
bet if you just wait a few weeks, the problem will go away.". I
immediately called his boss. His boss said "sounds like a loose neutral".
He offered to come out that evening (Friday yet). He finally found it--the
neutral drop on the pole was loose in its screw. The screw was corroded in
place, doing a good imitation of being tight.

Steve