Flickering lights - utility co. has been called - but I have questions for any electricians

Factual Questions
21

I spent the afternoon watching the lights. I turned on all the lights, turned on just the lights that were on last night, randomly turned the bathroom light off and on. And the lights never flickered. The electrician called at 4:00 and we laughed about how much it sucks to have a problem and when you get someone to look at it, it goes away. He told me to let him know if it happens again. I said that would probably be New Year’s Eve and he said “yep, 11:59”. I told him to come by and I’d write him a check and he said I didn’t owe him anything since he didn’t do anything. Wow. He spent 45 minutes here looking over things! What a nice guy. Now I know why he is a rockstar on Nextdoor.

And it’s been over 24 hours since I put in the service call at the utility company and they still haven’t shown up. On their website they show a total of 5 outages in the city. I’m starting to think they suck as much as I’ve heard people say. The electrician said they would just check the same things he did and since I’m not having the problem now, probably wouldn’t investigate further. He told me not to worry and if it happens again, we will figure it out.

Thanks everyone for the wealth of information here. I’ve learned a lot and that’s always good.

22

Any new appliances plugged in recently? We have to completely power down our coffee maker when not using it else it makes the kitchen lights flicker even in idle mode.

23

I had a similar thing happen to me recently. Some lights in particular were flickering, and randomly, not just when the AC came on, or the car started charging.

I started using an uninterruptible power supply on my computer as a logging voltmeter. I wrote a little script to check the line voltage every few seconds, and log if it was out of spec. Sure enough, the flickering coincided with voltage drops under 114, sometimes into the 90s.

Like you, the flickering was intermittent. It would be frequent one evening, and then not happen for a few days.

Eventually called the utility company, who were very responsive, and came out quickly. Their electrician determined that “one of my connections wasn’t torqued down all the way” or something like that. He fixed it, and the bad flickering didn’t return. No cost (other than raising rates for the whole state).

I think the intermittent nature was due to wind, though that could just be a retcon. The lights still flicker when a high load comes on in the house, but not randomly anymore.

24

The check any qualified electrician should make is a voltage check. Checking the outlets to be sure they are in the 110 to 120 range and constant. If the electrician were to find a low voltage then he should check the voltage at the panel. The voltages at the buss bars and then on the load side of the panel. By those readings he should be able to determine what is going on.

25

What was the final result?

26

Inconclusive. The utility company finally showed up on New Year’s Eve at 7 p.m. (over 72 hours after I’d called). The guy checked outside and said he was reading 121 on each line. He said there was no point in checking the pole since the lights were working right now. Said electricity was a fickle bitch. Well, not in those words but something about how “she” was moody. It was an weird conversation punctuated by gunfire in the distance. I’m sure he was really excited to be working New Year’s Eve with that going on. He told me to call if if happens again and I restrained myself from asking if it would take three days to show up next time.

Tuesday it rained all day and I stayed home to keep an eye on things and there was no flickering. So it looks like it wasn’t the rain causing it. I’ve checked all outlets and made sure the plugs were fully inserted (one wasn’t). Everything is working normally.

The electrician did suggest that I upgrade the breaker boxes inside and outside since they are original to this 1954 house. I’m probably going to make that my spring never-ending-home-owning project.

27

That seems unusual for a 1954 house. Fuses were in common use right up to the 1960s in most places, and only then did they start getting gradually replaced by circuit breakers.

28

I don’t know anything about this stuff so I assumed they were original. He just said about the kitchen box that he didn’t think they make this kind anymore. It might have been upgraded when the first owner did a big remodel of the place in 1975. I’ve never looked in the box outside but I know it has at least some fuses. Many years ago the dryer stopped working and the appliance guy had to go buy ceramic fuses for it. I’ve still got an extra one in the junk drawer. So maybe one is a 50s fuse box and one is a 70s circuit breaker. I might as well get them both replaced.

29

What brand of breaker box is it? If it’s Federal Pacific or Zinsco, they’re crap.

Federal Pacific might be marked FPE or might have the name “Stab-Lok”.

Zisnco was also sold under the name of Sylvnia (or sometimes Sylvania-Zinsco), and also under the name Kearney.

30

My last house had Federal Pacific breakers, and one went bad. The house had just been put on the market. I read all about how I should have the entire box replaced.

I ended up finding a replacement breaker and replacing it myself. It was a scary home repair, but it worked. The house sold pretty quickly and the buyer wanted an expedited closing so he specifically waived an inspection.

I drive by the house occasionally and it is still standing.

31

Yeah, FPE breakers / panels. I have my own story related to this. For a while, I’de been noticing that the UPS my computer was on would go into spasms of clicking, presumably in response to momentary voltage drops, then it would stop for weeks. The lights weren’t dimming, but another UPS on another circuit was behaving the same way, so I figured it was either the main breaker in the panel or PGE’s issue and made a mental note to get get ahold of them and ask about voltage drops. Come the first rain storm this year, and lights DID start flickering, and a few GFCIs on my outlets tripped. OK, I called PGE. A few days earlier I had actually finally gotten around to sending an email to a contact they had for voltage issues. They were responsive to the call all right - some poor PGE worker wound up showing up in the late afternoon in the rain, although I’d said it could probably wait until morning, figuring they probably had downed line, etc, to look after.

Interesting how he diagnosed it. After taking a look in the breaker panel, he pulled the meter, and explained that he was using a little gimmick that would draw 800 amps through the line drop from the pole so he could measure it (apparently, 800 amps is what the residential drop is rated for). He measured one side of the 3 phase, said “that’s ok”, and stuck it on the other side. Oops, that’s not OK. We the turn around and look up at the utility pole, where a connector to the transformer is crackling like mad, and creating a fireworks display. OK, he now knows what’s bad, and now has to climb up the pole, now in the dark, and replace the connector. Can’t complain about PGE service on this episode. They actually responded to my email a couple days later, closed it and told me to not hesitate to contact them again if I thought there were voltage issues.

Now FPE breakers and panels.

After he left, everything worked except the burners on the stove. I went out to the main panel, noted no breakers tripped, pulled the cover off and looked at them. Looked OK, so I called them again. The same guy came again, and when he pulled the panel he wiggled the dual 30 amp that was the break for the stove 240 circuit, and noted it was loose. AND he couldn’t plug the damn thing back in. His opinion was that the stab-lok breaker had been getting held in place against the bus bar by the front panel - one of the prongs on the stab-lok was bent. Now the last time panel had been opened was a few years earlier when I had A/C installed. The A/C installers had put in a new breaker for the A/C - I remember them telling me they had to shop around for a suitable breaker. We can probably blame the A/C installers for the situation.

After doing my research on FPE breakers and panels I realized that I couldn’t obtain a replacement breaker except for a “reconditioned” (read “used”) one, that my main panel was circa the 50’s, 100 amp, and using a manufacturer that had been discontinued 30 years ago and labeled a fire hazard. I decided that it was time to have the panel replaced, particularly as my next car will likely be EV, and I’ll want another 240 for a level 2 charger, not to mention solar panels. The new solar ready 200 amp panel goes in at the end of this month. Now what did I do about the stove - something utterly horrible - only one side of the 30 amp breaker with the bent prong was being used, and I wound up breaking off the bent prong so that I could plug the damn breaker into the bus bar by the remaining prong. I figure it’s better than the existing status that the A/C guys left it in, and the whole damn thing is getting replaced in a couple weeks anyway.

ETA:

It has occurred to me that a better thing to do might have been to remove the damaged breaker and run the stove through the unused side of the 30 amp dual that the A/C guys left. But I’m not sure the wire would reach.

32

It’s an XO Circuit Breaker Load Center made by Square D Company. Everything else on the box is too faded to read.

And get this. The electrician called this morning to check up on me. This guy’s a keeper. I told him I’d get with him in a couple months to discuss some upgrades.

33

XO? Wow, that’s old. That series is from the 50s. Current <hah!> versions from Square D now would be Homeline or QO. If you’ve got a mix of 70 year old breakers and fuses, it’s really past time for an upgrade.