I’m sorry, but I don’t understand this. Either a phone works or it doesn’t, what does it matter if some of the phones don’t work as long as you have a working phone?
Call on their behalf, I’m not sure why this is such a difficult issue.
I just meant that I wasn’t able to listen to what the CPS employee was saying on the phone at that time, so I’m getting secondhand information. That’s all I meant. Definitely we can call them again. But it has been frustrating because even the landline phones were broken/fried in the incident.
You’re never going to get anywhere with this with your elderly parents in the middle of communications. You need to get them to hand the problem to you.
Several years ago, I had power issues at my home and I used a power meter on several outlets revealing voltages intermittently running between 100 to about 200 volts. I became aware of the issue as the lights would fluctuate between dim and bright and I immediately contacted the power company. They pulled the outside meter and tightened the bolt on the neutral line and this solved the problem. The guy did tell me had I not called it could have resulted in a fire.
This sounds like a frustrating and expensive problem. But I wonder; if the problem is before the meter, is the utility financially responsible for the fried appliances?
I would be curious to know this, too! I have a feeling they will say no.
We finally got someone from the electric company to come out today, and they said it was a good thing we called. I’m not sure of all the terminology, but apparently it was “before the meter” because they replaced a wire with this really long, snaky cord and said they would be back in a month to fix it more permanently.
It definitely has been frustrating and expensive! I’m trying to just be grateful that we will get the AC replaced tomorrow and although our appliances were damaged, there wasn’t a fire, we weren’t hurt, etc. I never experienced anything like this before.
I’m glad you got it resolved and I agree that they’re going to say, no, they’re not responsible. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re not responsible.
I’m glad someone came out and addressed the issue.
I would definitely call the insurance company and see if they will cover the damaged equipment, they will go after the power company if appropriate.
Your home insurance should cover at least part of this, so it may not be that expensive.
But still annoying & frustrating!
That’s utility-speak for “their shit; not your shit.”
IOW, they caused 100% of your damage. Getting them to pay for that is a separate process, but your insurance company needs tbe be involved ASAP. Like before anything is repaired. They will need to send somebody out to document all the damage. Anything already fixed they will say you queered their chance to collect, so you’re screwed.
When shit is damaged, always call your insurer before you call a repairman. Cars, houses, whatever.
Okay, that is the next thing I will work on.
I’m glad you got it fixed. Yes, can the insurance company. They will chase the electric company, but they will also pay to fix your stuff in the mean time.
I’ll add this onto this thread, because it is similar. This is standard US residential split-phase service.
Every month or so some of the lights in our house will flicker. It is always the same lights. Others do not flicker. It will happen in a cluster, like lots of flickering one evening, and then none for another month. It is not related to wind.
Using the UPS on my computer I check the line voltage 4 times per second, and log if it is under 114 or over 126. The flickering coincides with periods of low voltage. I’ve never recorded an over voltage incident.
I’m only checking one phase, but there is no flickering on other lights, so I’m guessing the other phase is not showing voltage spikes or drops. Unfortunately I don’t have a way to record the voltage of the other phase.
I’ve contacted the power company about this several years ago, and in that time they’ve replaced (at their expense) the lines from the pole to the house. The problem is that it is so intermittent that when they come check, everything is fine.
Obviously contact the power company again, but any thoughts about what I should be looking for?
Did you have your breaker box checked? Could be a loose lug screw.
Thank you for your response. It probably is time to call an electrician to check things. I do want to make sure it isn’t a power company problem first, because then I don’t have to pay anything.
The first time the power company came out they checked the connections in the meter, and from the meter to the breaker box. I was told the neutral wasn’t torqued correctly, so he fixed it. I have a second breaker box that the power company would have no reason to check.
I plugged a Killowatt into an outlet on the non-flickering phase, and confirmed that the voltage was not spiking during the flickering. A Killowatt on the flickering phase did show the voltage drop.
The biggest problem in diagnosing this is how intermittent it is. It’s been bad tonight, there was a single instance on 3/14, and prior to that happened on 2/14. Last year, the power company said they would install a logging device to see if it was there problem, but that never happened.
It’s worth tightening up the screws on the flickering breaker and the neutral for that circuit, but only if you can shut off power to the panel where it is located and stay far from the bus bars for the main.
The flickering circuits are all on the the secondary panel, and it’s easy to shutoff the power to the secondary panel from the primary panel, I just don’t know anything about working inside a breaker panel. I’m comfortable working at a receptacle, but I don’t know how easily that scales up.
As the old joke goes, I’m happy to pay someone to know which screw to tighten. What I’m not happy doing is paying someone to come tighten screws when the problem is a faulty transformer or bad connection on the pole.
If multiple circuits in the sub-panel are flickering, it points to the feed from the main to the sub. You (or the electrician you hire) should inspect the panel bus, the feeder breaker at the main panel, the connection to that breaker, and the feed into the sub including the shutoff breaker if one exists.
Get an electrician, not a handyman (handy person? Just “handy”?)
An electrician came out, but my problem is unsolved, and possibly complicated and expensive.
The electrician did not see any obvious problems related to voltage drops in either panel. Many of the screws in the secondary panel needed a half turn, but there was no evidence of arcing, and he didn’t think that was the cause of the issue.
He did find several things that were wrong, there just isn’t a safe way to test the hypothesis. The weather head is not installed correctly. There is no service/weather loop on the cables, and the weather head itself faces sideways instead of down. This is a clear path for water to get into weather head, and down into the meter box. The unsafe way to test starts by getting a hose…
Additionally, the primary panel is not right. The panel itself is an old GE one, but it looks like it might have the wrong cover on it. The panel is also not grounded. The secondary panel is grounded, and neutral and ground are bonded in the secondary panel, instead of the primary.
The electrician doesn’t think the panel issues are causing my problem, but the easiest way to fix those problems and the weather head is to install a combined meter and panel box, so then the conduit to the weather head can go straight up from the meter, instead of having to make multiple curves to get the weather head close enough to the service drop attachment point to be within code. Right now it is too far away.
I’ll receive the proper quote soon, but his guesstimate was around $7500.
Ouch, but from the sound of it nothing is up to code, not even code at the time of install.