Lights flickering
 

I arrived home one night last week to find all the lights flickering, at the
time the cooker was on, along with the dryer, heaters, dishwasher etc. The
boiler has been condemned and we are currently using electric heaters and
immersion to supplement the gas fire. Anyway, on entering the garage to see
if I could see anything wrong with the fusebox, there was a very strong
smell of melting bakelite. Turned out, we had overloaded the system and
manage to melt the fusebox. Fortunately we managed to get an electrician out
the next day who replaced the fusebox and wiring with a split consumer unit.

However, when the iron is plugged in the socket in living room , with no
other major appliances on, the lights are still flickering occasionally. The
lights are on a different circuit to the sockets and the fusebox doesn't
appear to be warm. This wasn't noticeable before the meltdown. Is it
possible that the wiring has been damaged elsewhere as well?

Thanks

John

Lights flickering
 

John used his keyboard to write :
However, when the iron is plugged in the socket in living room , with no
other major appliances on, the lights are still flickering occasionally. The
lights are on a different circuit to the sockets and the fusebox doesn't
appear to be warm. This wasn't noticeable before the meltdown. Is it possible
that the wiring has been damaged elsewhere as well?

The overload obviously caused damage to the cable where it terminated
in the fuse box, I wonder if the cables were properly stripped back to
good clean copper?

Another possibility is that other damage has been done at another
point, possibly an Henley joint block, the meter or where the tails
enter the the cut out. There might even be damage to an underground
cable joint.

None of the above problems should happen, if the jobs have/had been
done in a workman like way, with correctly rated fuses/MCB's in place
and tight connections.

Warm, is caused by a large current flowing through poorly made or
inadequately rated connections or cables. Flickering would be a symptom
of a poorly made connection irrespective of the loading upon it - or it
could just be normal volts drop due to the increased load as the irons
thermostat turns itself on and off. Volts drop is perfectly normal -
your lights will dim slightly as a load is applied, then brighten as
the load turns off, they certainly should not flicker.

Get the engineer back out, express your concerns to him and ask him to
recheck for problems.



--

Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

Lights flickering
 

Harry Bloomfield verbally sodomised in
:

John used his keyboard to write :
However, when the iron is plugged in the socket in living room , with
no other major appliances on, the lights are still flickering
occasionally. The lights are on a different circuit to the sockets and
the fusebox doesn't appear to be warm. This wasn't noticeable before
the meltdown. Is it possible that the wiring has been damaged elsewhere
as well?

The overload obviously caused damage to the cable where it terminated
in the fuse box, I wonder if the cables were properly stripped back to
good clean copper?

Another possibility is that other damage has been done at another
point, possibly an Henley joint block, the meter or where the tails
enter the the cut out. There might even be damage to an underground
cable joint.

None of the above problems should happen, if the jobs have/had been
done in a workman like way, with correctly rated fuses/MCB's in place
and tight connections.

Warm, is caused by a large current flowing through poorly made or
inadequately rated connections or cables. Flickering would be a symptom
of a poorly made connection irrespective of the loading upon it - or it
could just be normal volts drop due to the increased load as the irons
thermostat turns itself on and off. Volts drop is perfectly normal -
your lights will dim slightly as a load is applied, then brighten as
the load turns off, they certainly should not flicker.

Get the engineer back out, express your concerns to him and ask him to
recheck for problems.



Ok.


--
Phil Kyle™

T
h i
i s
s l
f i l
S o n o
i u e n
g r s g

Lights flickering
 

Get the engineer back out, express your concerns to him and ask him to
recheck for problems.

Many thanks for the quick and comprehensive reply. I'll contact the
electrician after the New Year.

Regards

John

Lights flickering
 

On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 16:41:46 -0000, John wrote:

...along with the dryer, heaters, dishwasher etc. The boiler has been
condemned and we are currently using electric heaters...

All presumably plugged into the one ring main, downstairs?

Is it possible that the wiring has been damaged elsewhere as well?

With a load suffcient to cause rather a lot of heating in the fuse (do
you mean fuse as in a bit of wire or a cartridge?) they could well have
been similar haeting elsewhere in the ring particulary at any point with
a slightly below par connection.

Does it matter which socket you plug the iron into or is it only one
particular one that causes the flickering. An describe "flickering" a bit
more, on/off or just dimming?

I think you were lucky to have come home and reduced the load before the
house went up in flames.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Lights flickering
 

On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 16:41:46 -0000, John wrote:

...along with the dryer, heaters, dishwasher etc. The boiler has been
condemned and we are currently using electric heaters...

All presumably plugged into the one ring main, downstairs?

Mostly, yes.


Is it possible that the wiring has been damaged elsewhere as well?

With a load suffcient to cause rather a lot of heating in the fuse (do
you mean fuse as in a bit of wire or a cartridge?) they could well have
been similar haeting elsewhere in the ring particulary at any point with
a slightly below par connection.

It was an old type fuse box with wires that could be replaced.


Does it matter which socket you plug the iron into or is it only one
particular one that causes the flickering. An describe "flickering" a bit
more, on/off or just dimming?

Every couple of minutes there is a noticeable flicker. The lights
momentarily dim. They don't appear to go off completely but it is very
noticeable. I've since tried another socket and the lights didn't dim, but
then I tried the original socket and they didn't dim with it either that
time. Seems to be an intermittent problem.


Cheers

John

Lights flickering
 

John wrote:

However, when the iron is plugged in the socket in living room , with no
other major appliances on, the lights are still flickering occasionally. The
lights are on a different circuit to the sockets and the fusebox doesn't
appear to be warm. This wasn't noticeable before the meltdown. Is it
possible that the wiring has been damaged elsewhere as well?

We had a flickering problem for weeks. It turned out to be a faulty
pole fuse, i.e. on the power pole outside. The power company said that
we should have complained about it before it got so bad.