New apartment electrical problems, doesn't seem good, possible fire hazard?

[UnatcoAgent]

I moved into a new place this month. There is one room that is attached to the kitchen, it's about 12' by 12'. I have my computer setup there, nothing too drastic in terms of power consumption. At certain times turning the computer on, or the overhead light, will blow the fuse for that room. Other times it's just fine (like now).

Problems:
- This is not a heavy power load, Tower, monitor, speakers and lamp and that's it
- When the power does blow, the actual switch on the fuse box does not turn to 'off'. If I turn it off then back on, the room comes back to life.
- I can hear a *fizzle* noise when I turn the fuses on/off at the circuit breaker board - coming from behind it (not sure on nomenclature here) Basically it sounds like there's an electrical crackle coming from somewhere in the wall.

I'm going to call the landlord tomorrow, as this has me a bit sketched out, any advice / input would be appreciated.

So to summarize, the breaker for this room will trip very easily at certain times in a day. Sometimes it is fine, other times you can see the electricity fluctuating in the room as the overhead light will dim then go back to full, then repeat. Sometimes turning on the overhead light will trip the breaker on its own. The actual breaker tripping won't flip the switch to off, when I manually do this and then back to On to reset it, I sometimes hear a crackling electrical noise behind the board with all the switches on it (name?).

Thanks!

 

[ShawnD1]

I moved into a new place this month. There is one room that is attached to the kitchen, it's about 12' by 12'. I have my computer setup there, nothing too drastic in terms of power consumption. At certain times turning the computer on, or the overhead light, will blow the fuse for that room. Other times it's just fine (like now).

I assume you mean breakers since fuses haven't been used since Jesus walked the earth. Breakers have both a continuous and instantaneous trip rating. 15A is the instant trip, so it will immediately trip at 15A. The continuous trip is 80% of that, so running a load of 13A will trip after maybe 10 minutes.

Problems:
- This is not a heavy power load, Tower, monitor, speakers and lamp and that's it

Some engineers suck at engineering. They'll make a plan that includes several rooms on the same breaker. The electrical code in Canada allows up to 12 outlets on the same breaker, so that could easily include several rooms.

- When the power does blow, the actual switch on the fuse box does not turn to 'off'. If I turn it off then back on, the room comes back to life.

This is completely normal. I don't know the exact construction of a breaker, but it involves a spring that is charged. You put the breaker to "off" then charge the spring when moving it to "on". When the breaker trips, the switch stays in the on position but the spring is no longer charged. The spring is recharged (breaker reset) by moving it from on to off then back to on.

- I can hear a *fizzle* noise when I turn the fuses on/off at the circuit breaker board - coming from behind it (not sure on nomenclature here)[/b] Basically it sounds like there's an electrical crackle coming from somewhere in the wall.

This might be a problem, but it could also mean there's a high current load being energized. I would definitely check this out and get more opinions on it.

I'm going to call the landlord tomorrow, as this has me a bit sketched out, any advice / input would be appreciated.

If you have a voltmeter, you can map out the electrical system by turning on just one breaker and seeing which outlets have voltage. If you find some useful information, such as the computer being on the same circuit as your microwave, that could help you balance the loads a little better and stop the breakers from tripping all the time.

 

[marvdmartian]

I assume you mean breakers since fuses haven't been used since Jesus walked the earth.

LOL About 10 years ago, I lived in an apartment (think they were built back in the 60's) that still had a fuse panel, with the old screw-in glass fuses. I never overloaded any circuits with much power load, but some genius person that lived there before me had replaced all the 15A fuses with 30A fuses.

My guess is that they'd experienced the same problem as the OP, and figured that was the best way to "fix" it.

 

[jlee]

LOL About 10 years ago, I lived in an apartment (think they were built back in the 60's) that still had a fuse panel, with the old screw-in glass fuses. I never overloaded any circuits with much power load, but some genius person that lived there before me had replaced all the 15A fuses with 30A fuses.

My guess is that they'd experienced the same problem as the OP, and figured that was the best way to "fix" it.

Hey at least they were fuses and not pennies.

 

[Modelworks]

Hey at least they were fuses and not pennies.

pennies can come in handy in the middle of the night when the hardware store is closed

 

[Modelworks]

This is completely normal. I don't know the exact construction of a breaker, but it involves a spring that is charged. You put the breaker to "off" then charge the spring when moving it to "on". When the breaker trips, the switch stays in the on position but the spring is no longer charged. The spring is recharged (breaker reset) by moving it from on to off then back to on.

Breakers use the idea that heated metal expands to trip a knotched lever which is being pulled on by a spring. Sort of like moving the cheese on a mouse trap

It can also be a faulty breaker tripping early. If the breaker rating is exceeded often enough the metal becomes stretched and it trips a lot easier.

 

[BurnItDwn]

pennies can come in handy in the middle of the night when the hardware store is closed

Good thing the fire stations operate on a 24 hour basis ...

 

[DrPizza]

If the problem is intermittent as you described in the OP, my first guess is that you're assuming that only that room is on one breaker. It's fairly likely that something else is on that breaker (or lots of something elses.) If all those something elses are on & total up to near the rated limit of the breaker, then flipping on your computer or the light is simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

What you can do is flip that breaker off & see what else turns off besides that room. As you mentioned it's an apartment, if you don't see anything else turned off, then leave the breaker off for a few days (or until your neighbors complain that their microwave stopped working) to see if you're paying for your neighbors electric too.

 

[UnatcoAgent]

Wow, thanks guys, this has been incredibly informative!

So to summarize, the breaker for this room will trip very easily at certain times in a day. Sometimes it is fine, other times you can see the electricity fluctuating in the room as the overhead light will dim then go back to full, then repeat. Sometimes turning on the overhead light will trip the breaker on its own. The actual breaker tripping won't flip the switch to off, when I manually do this and then back to On to reset it, I sometimes hear a crackling electrical noise behind the board with all the switches on it (name?).

I'll update once we have some results later, cheers guys!

 

[UnatcoAgent]

If the problem is intermittent as you described in the OP, my first guess is that you're assuming that only that room is on one breaker. It's fairly likely that something else is on that breaker (or lots of something elses.) If all those something elses are on & total up to near the rated limit of the breaker, then flipping on your computer or the light is simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

What you can do is flip that breaker off & see what else turns off besides that room. As you mentioned it's an apartment, if you don't see anything else turned off, then leave the breaker off for a few days (or until your neighbors complain that their microwave stopped working) to see if you're paying for your neighbors electric too.

I'm going to do this right now, great idea.

 

[WHAMPOM]

I moved into a new place this month. There is one room that is attached to the kitchen, it's about 12' by 12'. I have my computer setup there, nothing too drastic in terms of power consumption. At certain times turning the computer on, or the overhead light, will blow the fuse for that room. Other times it's just fine (like now).

Problems:
- This is not a heavy power load, Tower, monitor, speakers and lamp and that's it
- When the power does blow, the actual switch on the fuse box does not turn to 'off'. If I turn it off then back on, the room comes back to life.
- I can hear a *fizzle* noise when I turn the fuses on/off at the circuit breaker board - coming from behind it (not sure on nomenclature here) Basically it sounds like there's an electrical crackle coming from somewhere in the wall.

I'm going to call the landlord tomorrow, as this has me a bit sketched out, any advice / input would be appreciated.

Thanks!

This is my experience with an electrical *fizzle*, loose connection or a bare hot wire shorting out to a ground.

 

[DrPizza]

Good luck.
I can only think of 3 things:
Most likely: a lot of other stuff on the circuit. (When I remodeled my kitchen, I discovered it was on 2 circuits. Most of one of those circuits was shared with the bathroom & a bedroom. We tripped that breaker all the time.)

#2: breaker is going bad.

#3: bad connection to the breaker.

 

[UnatcoAgent]

Landlord is on his way over.

I should mention with that fizzle/crackle noise, I only hear it coming from the breaker box when I'm resetting the switches after they have been tripped, so it could be the high current being reconnected, perhaps?

I've just reset everything and didn't hear anything, and nothing is fluctuating / tripping the breaker right now. There is a slight buzzing noise coming from the breaker panel, you have to lean in to hear it - I'm not sure if that's normal or not?

 

[HybridSquirrel]

if you know a firefighter, call him over and have him check it out. most of them know the general fire code and can tell you if its a hazard or not.

 

[Kelemvor]

Might even have a neighbors room on your own breaker too. Although I'd hope that's not the case. But definitely map out which outlets and lights and things are on which breaker. Might just need an extension cord to an outlet on a different circuit.

 

[UnatcoAgent]

Ok, landlord just left.

First off, thanks for the input guys - very informative and helpful!

2 things happened after we opened the breaker box up:

- The connection to the breaker for the troubled room was a bit loose, it's now tightened and I'm hoping that does the trick.

- Somehow a mouse found his way into the breaker box and entirely fried himself / died inside. He was pretty stuck to the inside of the box, literally had to scrape him out. One of his paws was touching the bare wire where it connects to the trip switch, he wasn't charred or anything though so I'm not sure what happened to him. Either way, kinda funny, took the landlord back a few feet when he first saw it!

 

[Kelemvor]

Pics?!?

 

[UnatcoAgent]

Pics?!?

I thought about that but didn't want to with the land lord there, he was a little guy. There's still some fur on the ground if you want a shot of that

 

[DrPizza]

Ahhh, it was the 3rd on my list. Darn it, I was going to put that one first because of the fizzle sound. I ran into that problem once in the past too. When I did, I went through and discovered that quite a few of the connections were just barely loose, but still needed to be tightened.

The one pic I regret not taking was the dessicated rat inside a wall with his teeth embedded in an electrical wire.

 

[AlienCraft]

Ahhh, it was the 3rd on my list. Darn it, I was going to put that one first because of the fizzle sound. I ran into that problem once in the past too. When I did, I went through and discovered that quite a few of the connections were just barely loose, but still needed to be tightened.

The one pic I regret not taking was the dessicated rat inside a wall with his teeth embedded in an electrical wire.

DAMMIT JIM!

Bad connections can develop due to thermal cycling, and it has been our experience that even after new construction, connections need to be checked if there are ANY anomalies like dimming lights, crackling sounds.

 

[Rubycon]

[/b]
DAMMIT JIM!

Bad connections can develop due to thermal cycling, and it has been our experience that even after new construction, connections need to be checked if there are ANY anomalies like dimming lights, crackling sounds.

Or the proverbial loose neutral!

 

[spacejamz]

OP, do you have renter's insurance? even if this fixes your issue, you should look into it in case something happens...damn well worth it, especially if you ever really need to actually use it...

 

[UnatcoAgent]

OP, do you have renter's insurance? even if this fixes your issue, you should look into it in case something happens...damn well worth it, especially if you ever really need to actually use it...

I'm actually in the midst of hunting for this right now, I totally agree with you. I had it last year as well, and a number of my friends weren't even aware that such insurance exists. I'll be looking into it this week.

 

[marvdmartian]

Ok, landlord just left.

First off, thanks for the input guys - very informative and helpful!

2 things happened after we opened the breaker box up:

- The connection to the breaker for the troubled room was a bit loose, it's now tightened and I'm hoping that does the trick.

- Somehow a mouse found his way into the breaker box and entirely fried himself / died inside. He was pretty stuck to the inside of the box, literally had to scrape him out. One of his paws was touching the bare wire where it connects to the trip switch, he wasn't charred or anything though so I'm not sure what happened to him. Either way, kinda funny, took the landlord back a few feet when he first saw it!

Damn, that just about beats a mouse popping out of an air conditioner!! :awe: