[jchelpers]

I have full electric service coming into house and full service on all circuit breakers. An electrician said that I had a neutral wire that was loose somewhere, but he has been unable to locate it. Currently most of my major appliances are running i.e. washer, dryer, stove and some recepticles work throughout the house and some lights, but full rooms are out my bedroom and bathroom have no recepticles or lights working, my daughter has lost half the power in her room, refrigerator out and part of living room and my sons room is out. I plugged my refrigerator and some other stuff into recepticles that were working-- I hope this was safe to do. I need to get an electrician who has more time to trace down the problem but how do you figure out which neutral wire in the house takes that much stuff out. And is plugging in above mentioned safe

[ballengerb1]

Plugging your refrigerator into another receptacle should be fine as long as you are not over loading the circuit, your breakers will let you know if you have. The neutral is part of a larger "looplike" circuit so if its open it may affect many outlets. You or a good electrician need to go to every receptacle and check every connection. Somewhere you will find a receptacle with power coming TO it but not LEAVING it going downstream.

[donf]

Call your Utility company now and ask that a technician verify that the electrical service is being delivered properly to your residence. This sounds to me more like a phase bar is out and you are not receiving two hot legs of 120 volts from them.

Neutral is supplied to your service by the Utility company. If the failure (open Neutral) is at the utility company side, it must be fixed immediately, by the Utility company.

Tracking an Open Neutral is a branch circuit by branch circuit process.

If there is a bad Neutral from the Utility a simple Multimeter voltage test would show this.

With the Black Probe on one black (Hot) termination and the Red probe on the other (set the meter to greater than 240 volts), you should see 240+/- VAC.

Next take the black probe and place it on the Neutral termination, You should now see 120 +/- VAC between the Red and Black probes.

If that is what you see, move the red probe to the other hot conductor and make the same test. Again you should see 120+/- VAC.

If you do not see the 120 Volt legs, contact your power company immediately.

On the branch circuit level. A Neutral (return) path is supplied for each circuit or part of a multi wire branch circuit.

What that means to you is that each neutral connection point can be traced back to each white wire connected to the main panelboard or additional panelboard. It is definitely not one single Neutral.

Normally I would expect that a single bad neutral connection will only effect one circuit breaker (circuit).

If all of the locations that are without power are on the same breaker, I would suspect a failed neutral connection.

However, if there are multiple branch circuits involved, such as kitchen, bedroom, bedroom, den, then I am suspect of either a bad Hot connection from the utility (one of the bus bars is not receiving the proper voltage, or a failed Neutral connection from the Utility.

None of this is really difficult to trace out, so I am hard pressed to understand why the electrician walked away from the problem.

For goodness sake, electricians are normally paid on a "Time and Material" scale. The more time it takes the more money he makes.

To walk away from a problem because it will take too much time is illogical!

The electrician you hired was a licensed electrician and not just some handyman, correct?

[jamesdavino]

If your getting a flickering in the house on most if not all your circuits you might have an insufficient ground coming in from the pole outside. The way to check this is to either remove the elect. Panel cover and if you have a meter and you know how to use it first check to see if you have 240 volts coming.You do this by touching each lead to each hot wire going into the main breaker. If you have 240 volts or somewhere within 4 or 5 volts in any direction your good there. Now take one of the meter leads and put 1 of the main leads to 1 of the wires to the main breaker and the other lead goes to the ground wire or lug securing it. If you get a much higher reading than 120 volts, say like 160 - 190 volts then you have a bad ground coming into your house.Call the power company and advise. In the meantime this power surge could and or will damage any electronic device that's being used.The power co. is responsible for everything coming into your outside meter base and will fix at no cost to you. Secondly, has anyone installed a new lt. fixture which requires going into a ceiling junction box or maybe installed a new switch or receptacle and if so the neutral wires may not be secured under the wire nut. Check this also. If you don't have enough experience with electricity, please do not attempt to work on the elect. Panel yourself. Being frightened of electricity makes that part of the job extremely dangerous. It is a must you know what your doing,what to touch and what not to touch in a panel.. good luck I hope that helps you a little more..

[tkrussell]

You need to hire another electrician, one that has good troubleshooting skills.

You may have to interrogate to be sure they understand what the symptoms are, report of other electrician, and be sure to understand the time an material billing rates.
Do not bother asking for a firm price, t-shooting is somewhat of an art, and if anyone gives an estimate, it will be outrageously high. I refuse to give prices for t-shooting.

Try larger firms that have a service dept. or a good service tech.
Clearly, you hired an electrician, and so that tells me you have great respect for working on live parts.

The open neutral can be a small break in a piece of metal, a loose wire, a burnt splice, even thou rare a broken wire n the middle of a cable run.

It takes an educated guess to know how a building that you did not wire is wired, to include the path of wires you cannot see, to find boxes and wiring to do testing.

Open neutral is the worst issue to find. Only someone that has the experience can find it. Understanding circuitry is the most important. Along with the points of failure of all the mechanics of the wiring and panels.

Do not do any testing yourself unless you are sure of what your doing.

I hope you find a good electrician.

We need to caution do it yourselfers about opening live panels.

Troubleshooting often needs to be energized. This practice is allowed by NFPA 70E, with proper PPE protective gear. A minimum suit for one man can be $1000.00 an up.

Working on live parts is no longer treated lightly. I can imagine I have given advice without thinking of who is working on what. I live and breath PPE everyday now, and I find it unsettling that I do not think of it here.

I would like to caution others of giving advice to work on live parts, especially the panel. Give proper warnings, no need to go over board with bold and fireworks, just a firm warning.

Jchelpers clearly did the right thing to hire someone, and I hope will find someone that can help in a reasonable amount of time. Those who answer questions need to pick up on these subtleties.

[jchelpers]

Thanks for every one's advice, I called utility company first and they said the problem was from my side not theirs. The electrician that came came after his working hours as a favor to me (friend) and he started by looking at my breaker box (circuits) and tested all of those, said the problem didn't lie there, then he flipped some and did check recepticles around a few locations of my house but could not find the one with a neutral out, he said it could even be wired from one of my ceiling light fixtures. All I know is that every room in my house except laundry room has been somewhat affected with either recepticles out and ceiling light fixtures (some rooms totally out and some are half out) he left saying he felt like a neutral was out on circuit #20. ( there does seem to be a lot out for one neutral) I know nothing about electric just wanted some info so that when I do hire electrician I know if he's on up and up, I know they are expensive and I work Monday - Friday so trying to get one here and me at the same time will be difficult. Appreciate any more responses if you want to throw some my way.

[jchelpers]

PS nothing is flickering it just all went out at once. After it first happened it stayed off all night came back on next morning and then went out again and has now been totally off for three days.

[jamesdavino]

JC, one more thing, if you have a ranch ( single story ) I would start with the easiest method for a non electrician, start checking all your junction boxes in your attic and again shut off power and be very careful not to fall through the ceiling, step only on the joists or you can bring 2 pieces of 1/2" plywood cut around 2' wide and 3 or 4' long and use them to either walk on or lie on.You'll need a good flash lite, some wire nuts, a flathead screwdriver,a phillips head and a pair of linesman pliers or Kliens as electricians call them.If you have a fanny pack use it to carry all the tools. Locate a J-box, remove the cover and gently pull the wires up that are pushed down and check for burn marks, melted wire nuts or loose connections inside the wire nuts. When you finish with one J-box go to the next and so on. In older homes a lot of the home runs or feeds to different rooms were run to J-boxes in the ceilings and then branched off to feed different sections of the house. But before you do all this, ask the electrician to check the power coming into the outside meterbase. Ask him to check for a bad ground connection.This is done by checking with a meter holding 1 lead to one of the hot phases on the top and the other touching the ground and holding it on them for several seconds to see if you get an abnormally high reading or fluctuation. Should get no higher than 126 volts.If the reading is in the area of say 150-190 volts, you have a bad ground coming in and power companys don't want to acknowledge that unless you get an electricians word. It's happens more often than you might think. Goof luck with the attic and take your time and don't fall through the ceiling...

[donf]

JC,

I'm curious, how did the utility verify that the problem is on your side of the meter?

Did they send a tech or did they just tell you it was not their problem?

[jamesdavino]

Donf is correct ,most of the time the power co. will tell you that its on your end and not theirs over the phone without sending a tech out to take readings. Sounds like your single phasing. That's when your only getting power to 1 leg only. 120 volts coming in as opposed to 240 volts. Have this checked out 1st. And we'll go from there. It's sounds like you have enough to keep you busy for awhile. Usually when this occurs every other breaker in the panel will be hot and anything that need 240 volts will not work. For instance, dryer, stove,cooktop,hot water heater, heat pump or a/c, well pump welders in garage and what have you... If this is the case, it must be 1st. Checked out at the meter base, if that's good then check your main breaker in the panel. Meter base-their problem UNLESS you have burned out or rusted and broken lugs, then it's your problem...

[jchelpers]

OK guys-- electric company back out here tonight, I had them recheck my meter, and it is definitely a problem in my house. My electrician friend left the other night and said neutral out on circuit 20. The utilities electric guy actually came in my house tonight and verified what the electrician friend said, they have both measured voltage from my breaker box and I have full power. They both looked at a receptacle in the kitchen and said it had power coming in but that the neutral was gone from it, exactly where the neutral is lost is the problem. How do you start looking for where a neutral line is lost. I know I need to hire an electrician, but before I do that, could it be as simple as a neutral not hooked to a receptacle somewhere, should I check all recepticles that are out before I break my bank or would that only take out the one receptacle, since every room in my house has been affected in some way except for 2 of them. Do you start from where electric is on or off.

[jchelpers]

Also, what really confuses me is that they say neutral out on circuit 20, with this much stuff out, Im a little scared that I had that many plug ins and light switches, including a refrigerator which ran off one circuit, or do they possible mean it just starts at circuit 20. Im learning a lot about electricity any ways and really appreciate your answers and feedback. Donf, tkrussel and james davino you might just be able to walk me through this. Thinking about buying my own circuit breaker thing ma jig that checks voltage. I have none of this equipment, but it might be cheaper than hiring an electrician, or at least I could loosen all recepticles to save money on their hourly rate. Ive called 3 companies and they all say that they send two guys out and charge 75 an hour for each guy, so were talking 150 dollars an hour and this problem apparently could take hours to fix. Any thing I could do to save time doing stuff they won't have to do will help,

[tommybwiz]

Go back and read the post, guys. The dryer and stove are working, and unless they are gas, then the "single phasing" theory is out. Has anyone considered that this may be an older home with single strand wiring (AKA knob and tube)?

[aaron84848]

@jchelpers,
What was the solution for your problem? I have the same problem in my house :(