[cchisanga]

Recently we have been having strange issues with our breakers. :confused:

Typically if we have more than 2 appliances running in the kitchen, the GFI outlets will pop the breaker. We just reset it, and try not to use too many things at once. This is fine. :rolleyes:

But... yesterday, I was making coffee in the kitchen, and the breaker popped, strange because nothing else was plugged in, I reset the breaker, and went back into the kitchen, and noticed that the cable had actually come out of the outlet.. it was plugged in before, and must had POPPED out of the outlet when the breaker blew.
My father was in town, I told him what had happened and looked at the breaker box. He saw that one breaker was showing a bit of orange even after being reset... so it was always showing a little orange. He didn't like the looks of this, and replaced the breaker. (Keep in mind that my father had just installed a new outlet in the living room for a plasma TV. He ran in on the same line that goes to our bedroom. )

During the day yesterday, our neighbor had a new AC unit installed. We own a condo above his unit and share a common space where our AC units are set up. Since then, our breaker has popped for our AC unit, Blower. Causing our furnace to not blow out any heat through the vents... brr... The furnace seems to be running fine. Also this morning, my husband went to turn on the bedroom light switch and the bedroom breaker popped and the light bulb had blown. We only had the alarm clock and the TV on. (not the plasma in the living room, just the TV in the bedroom) Very strange, this has never happened before. We have been in this house for about 5months and have not had problems like this previously. Only near the end of the summer we had to have our capacitor replaced on our AC unit.
(the unit is only 3 years old... our furnace is about 5 years old.)

What could this neighbors new AC unit have effected to make our breakers start popping so easily? My husband looked and they did not appear to have tapped into our power.
Right now we have our furnace off and have not reset the breaker in fear that something could go wring and cause a fire when we are not home.

I called the power company and they are not experiencing any power losses... PLEASE HELP!!

[tkrussell]

Sounds like the symptoms of an open neutral. Really weird voltages are applied to some or all circuits in the house. Blubs blow out, breakers trip for no apparent reason, etc.

Being a multi-dwelling building, I imagine that you have a meter center someplace, several meters in one large box, and each meter has the main breaker for that unit.

I say this because I am reminded that I had a loose neutral by a loose or corroded bolted connection of two bus bars in a 6 gang meter socket for a 6 apt building. Only one unit was affected because of the location of the bolted bars, but knowing how these are made let's me know how something in one unit could affect another unit.

Can also be the main neutral from the utility transformer, either at transformer or at the meter pack. This is what I think is a likely possibility in your case.

In any case, this is not a DIY project and really needs a good troubleshooting electrician, not just a wiring contractor. There are several tools available that will help find this needle in a haystack. A simple visual inspection easily may not find anything.

This cannot be found by a simple Wiggy tester, even a digital multimeter is not enough. Nowadays, there are contractors that specialize in trouble shooting and use infrared cameras to find hot spots, ultrasound sound detectors to hear arcing, millivolt meters to find high resistance connections by measuring volt drops in volts less than 1 volt, and power recorders to analyze voltage and current to narrow down elusive causes.

And the knowledge they have of the weak stops of equipment, feeders and circuits will help greatly.

Oh and I hate to scare you, but the 6 unit that had the problem? The condition caused a fire just an hour or so of finding it, years ago without the high tech toys of today.

In any case, you have a serious problem that needs attention. I only gave you a couple ideas. There are many actual connection, bolts, bars, etc that can be the cause.

Try to, and you may need to, have the utilty company there when the electrician is there, to open the meters and check behind each meter, and their connections at the transformer. Let the electrician check from the meters into all the panels, Best to have everything checked, and tightened after the problem is found.

If you get this done, get back with what is found.

If you want, PM me and I can offer a network that should be able to help.

Also, you being a condo owner, not sure how your declaration assigns responsibility of common equipment.