Is there an electrician in the house?

Here’s the deal:

I came home from work tonight, and electricity was out in half of my house. For example, almost all wall-sockets in the family room do not work, yet the overhead lights do.

All outlets in the kitchen are OK, except for one (the one the refrigerator uses). All outlets in the family room gone.

Master bedroom, both bathrooms, everything OK. Garage, half and half, outlet-wise. bedroom #2, overhead light out, all outlets ok.

bedroom #3, all ok. enclosed patio (off of family room) all out.

outside lights, all ok. and the weird thing… electrical stove kind of works, but not really… turning burners to HIGH gets them very warm, but not hot. Too hot to touch for more than a second or two, but not hot enough to cook.

And yes, i checked all circuit breakers, and reset all of them twice… nothing funny going on there. Please help!
Obviously i’m calling an electrician, but i’d like to know what i’m in for :frowning:

One more thing… dunno if it’s related, but the streetlight outside my house was out tonight as well…

That is plain weird. Are you checking outlets with the same appliance?

Your electrical stove problem suggests that your supply voltage is too low, which will affect some appliances but not others. But you should notice that the working lights are too dim, and no lights should be out of commision completely…

When you find out what it is, please post! I’m dying to know!

It sounds like one phase of your power is out.

Normally, you have two power lines to your house that each supply 120V but at 180[sup]o[/sup] phase difference. This allows you to have 240V appliances that use both lines to achive the voltage difference they need to operate, or just 120V for applicances that just need that much.

Your electric stove is one appliance that needs 240V. Without the second phase, it only has half the energy to run, so it doesn’t get as hot. Your clothes dryer also probably uses 240V.

Your other circuits (outlets, lights, etc.) tap off of either one or the other phase line. Whichever one is out kills the outlets and lights attached to it.

Special appliances often have their own breaker so they can be isolated, such as refridgerators, garbage disposals, washers and dryers. So the breaker to your fridge is attached to the bad phase, but the outlets are on the good one.

The outlets to a rooms without special appliances are often on the same circuit, but the lights aren’t necessarily. And your garage was probably wired with whatever circuit wire was closest, explaining why it’s 1/2 & 1/2.

Oh, and as to your street light: I probably walked by it, and it went out. I have this strange ability to knock out street lights as I walk by. But I can’t control it. :slight_smile:

(I’m assuming you’re in the US) –

You’ve lost a “leg”. US houses are fed with 240 volts, with a “center ground”, which means you get two 120 volt “legs”, which can be added together to get 240 volts (for dryers, stoves, etc.) (I’ve simplified this a little, Cecil has actually talked about this also). Normally when you wire a house, you try to balance all the 120 volt loads, so half the receptacles, lights, etc. are on one leg, and half on the other. It sounds like either your main breaker in your panel is bad, so it’s only letting one leg through, or somethings happened outside at the distribution transformer that feeds your house. If the streetlight is also powered by the same transformer that feeds your house, then it sounds like the transformer may have a problem, since the streetlight is out. I’d call the power company before calling an electrician- an electrician won’t be able to check stuff outside your house, although he can tell if the problem is outside (by measuring the voltage coming into your panel).

I’d unplug any expensive electronics while the power company is working outside :slight_smile:

Arjuna34

Argh! Beaten again! :slight_smile:

Arjuna34

Oh, sure. Like you’re so special. :smiley:

I agree; you’re missing a leg in your service.

I doubt that the streetlight has anything to do with it, unless your neighbors have the same problem as you do. The problem may lay with the incoming power, or it may be a bad contact on your main breaker, either where it attaches inside the breaker box or inside the breaker itself.

Electricity enters your house at 220 volts in two legs. One alternates between zero and 110 volts; the other alternates between zero and a negative 110 volts. Half of the breakers in your house feed from one leg and the other half feed from the other. Your stove is only warm because it’s only getting half the voltage (I assume that the elements go to neutral for safety; someone correct me if I’m wrong.)

In any case, be careful. You’ve got 220 volts of electricity there, and potentially hundereds of amps of current.

Another option is that you had a ground fault interrupt trip on you somewhere on the line. According to my contractor, if your outlets are wired in series, a GFI will not only take care of its own outlet, but will also affect all the outlets behind it. If you have GFI breakers on any of your outlets, try checking them.

A GFI breaker or receptacle wouldn’t affect a stove.

Arjuna34

Why not call the power comp? That’s there job. Shucks, they come out for nothing.

Yes call the power company first. They will check it as far as the meter. After that it’s your problem.
I’ll bet you missed something though.
chances are that you’ve lost a leg. Explained above. The odds of it being something else are too high.
If you have all circuit breakers there is probably one side of the main breaker out. Some boxes have fuses in the main. If yours does just pull the main fuse block out and pull the fuses out one at a time. Sometimes the offending fuse will rattle but use an ohmmeter to check them.
Don’t try this unless you are comfortable working with enough electricity to kill you.
good luck.
If all else fails call an electrician.

Have you checked with your neighbors? It might not be just you. Besides the aforementioned problems it could also be a neighborhood brownout.

This happened to my mother. It turned out to be a problem with the wires outside somewhere, and she wasn’t the only one affected. Justwannano is right, there should be a large fuse or breaker for each leg of your houses power, in addition to the fuses/breakers on each circuit. If you have fuses, but not an ohmmeter, an easy check is to switch the fuses for the two legs. If the other half of the house is out instead, it’s the fuse. Otherwise, it’s the power coming in.

Thanks for all your input… As it turns out, when I rushed out on my way to work this morning, there was a power company truck parked outside, so I figured they were working on it. I assume a neighbor called before I did.

When I came home tonight, everything was fine, and the streetlight was back on, too. So, I guess it was a transformer/power line issue? Anyway, I learned something new.

Now to take care of all the extension cords running from my computer and tv into the garage…