Hello, I'm new to this forum and I thought I'd share a strange problem I encountered today and see if anyone had any ideas about what might be causing it.
I was helping a friend of mine check some wiring in his house and we noticed an interesting phenomenon. As soon as we put a load on one of the circuits in the house the voltage on that phase would drop to about 75 volts. The other phase however would jump to 200 volts! We checked all the wiring and didn't find any problems. We then went back to the main panel and pulled out all the breakers except one. The problem still persisted! We have determined that his meter is probably bad and he is going to call to get it replaced tomorrow. What I'm curoius about is what exactly is happening in the meter to cause the voltage shift between the phases? After we determined that the meter was probably at fault, my friend mentioned that his neighbor did tell him that there had been a lot of ice on the meter this winter. My friend has been away from his house for about a year and had only periodically checked it. So if there was ice, there was probably water in the meter. I know that this would probably cause corosion but how exactly would that cause the issue we are seeing?
Thanks for any insight you might have into this weird issue.
I was helping a friend of mine check some wiring in his house and we noticed an interesting phenomenon. As soon as we put a load on one of the circuits in the house the voltage on that phase would drop to about 75 volts. The other phase however would jump to 200 volts! We checked all the wiring and didn't find any problems. We then went back to the main panel and pulled out all the breakers except one. The problem still persisted! We have determined that his meter is probably bad and he is going to call to get it replaced tomorrow. What I'm curoius about is what exactly is happening in the meter to cause the voltage shift between the phases? After we determined that the meter was probably at fault, my friend mentioned that his neighbor did tell him that there had been a lot of ice on the meter this winter. My friend has been away from his house for about a year and had only periodically checked it. So if there was ice, there was probably water in the meter. I know that this would probably cause corosion but how exactly would that cause the issue we are seeing?
Thanks for any insight you might have into this weird issue.