It's a low tech mechanical device . It can fail in a lot of ways . Change it . I replaced a 200 amp main breaker for a friend of mine . Intermittent trip under light load
Baffling electrical issue
- Thread starter Cropduster172
- Start date
If replacing the suspect breaker doesn't work, piggy back that circuit onto another adjacent circuit (that is not overloaded) If the problem goes away, then you now know there is an issue farther up in the circuit - possibly at a tie-in or junction or 3 way or duplex box. So many places for a resistive tie in. l have even seen wall board or stud nails piercing a closed up 14/2 run.
You can bench race this all day. I would start on knocking down probable issues methodically 1 by 1 - if you are capable.
CAUTION: Don't fool around in the load center if you are not adequately experienced.
You can bench race this all day. I would start on knocking down probable issues methodically 1 by 1 - if you are capable.
CAUTION: Don't fool around in the load center if you are not adequately experienced.
Sorry, but unless future work is pro-bono, this company would never enter my house again. Two licensed electricians in 2 hours should have either found the issue or already pulled new wire. Its a single 120VAC run, not a 5 layer circuit board.
Open the breaker panel (load center) and put a test light on the specific breaker. This will give you an answer as to the functionality of the breaker itself. Then turn the breaker off and tighten the wire connection and also tighten the neutral wire connection on the buss bar.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but pulling new wire if you see the suspect run coming up into the attic involves connecting new to old in the attic and then pulling it down to the panel for connection? Or?
I am not an electrician, but I imagine you would want to get a glow stick up through the hole before you pulled the old wire out?
I still don't think pulling wire makes sense. 10 year old wire doesn't go bad.
The run integrity should be the last thing suspected.
Jabbed daisychain connections at a sw or duplex is near the top of bad actors once the feed from the breaker is found adequate.
The issue was resolved. Here's what happened. Prior to the spotlights in question being installed we had the same outfit and one of the same electricians install a ceiling fan in the same room in late June. He installed a switch that controlled power to the fan but the fan remote controlled fan and fan light functions. That switch was in the circuit for the ceiling spotlights as well as a ceiling fan in the bedroom nextdoor and two light fixtures in the stairwell. So if we turned the switch off to shut the fan off, it cut power to the switches for the other fixtures on that circuit. So the spotlights that I had these guys replace were perfectly fine it's that we didn't know that powering off the fan cut power to them and other fixtures. So these guys are asking to be paid for a problem they created. The two guys that came out to trouble shoot the problem discovered it in less than 30 minutes.
I'm willing to pay the $300 for the installation of the new spotlights but nothing more.
I'm willing to pay the $300 for the installation of the new spotlights but nothing more.
You nailed it. It was a matter of connecting the dots which we had no way of knowing were connectable.
Sounds to me like they just found power and ran with it and didn't take the time to notice the entire fan assembly was switched with the cans. Or they simply thought the fan spinning with the cans on was acceptable. Either way, no thanks. Good luck sleeping with the fan on. Lol. *I will say you probably should have looked their work over in June so simply not paying them now is somewhat questionable. It is worth having that conversation with them though.
Been a while since I've done a paddle fan with the remote system, but I would have guessed a fan blade power and light power could have been done separately. The remotes can make that difficult though so at the minimum the fan and light should have had constant power with the remote being the only on/ off "switch." I do remember them being a pain with very little room to work. I have since gone to the commercial electrical side of things. No more houses or paddle fans. Lol.
No. The fan was not switched with the cans originally. He replaced an existing fan in June and added a rocker switch by his choice, which was evidently connected to the cans and other fixtures. Shutting the fan off by that switch cut power to the cans. It's a wireless remote for the new fan and it works fine now because the guys that came yesterday bypassed his rocker switch leaving it useless and reconnected the circuit which included the cans and other fixtures. The wireless remote is the only way to operate the fan now... I'm OK with that. His addition of the rocker switch was the root cause of the entire problem.
^^^^This would be the correct way to wire it. In fact, it probably could be easily rewired correctly by just accessing the junction box where the switch is currently located. If it was my home, I would consider doing it myself with one of these stacked double switches.
So I would suspect either a breaker or a poor connection in a junction box. Probably a poor connection in a junction box over the breaker. I have opened up junction boxes and found half burned wire nuts where it was a poor connection that generated heat. A non conducting power tester will help as will a second person.
The problem has been resolved .
Excuse my French but that is complete merde work!!!!!!!!! Wow.
If I chose to refuse payment for the new can light installation and went to small claims court, it's a slam dunk win for me. I never needed new spotlights from the beginning the fact they didn't work because a switch they installed across the room was off as the fan isn't used in winter is on them. But I like the ones they installed...LED vs 90's Halogen and they're definitely brighter, so yeah, $300 is fair.
But I'm not paying them for the time it took to track down a problem they created... especially since the guy that installed the switch for the fan was one of the guys that installed the new can spotlights. I realize this guy probably goes to 4-5 houses in the area/day, but wouldn't it click in most people's heads that oh yeah, I remember this place, I installed the ceiling fan here a few months ago? In fact, when he showed up to install the new spotlights, I even said, " oh hey, I remember you. You installed our ceiling fan in the same room in the summer."
I think they're reasonable folks so it'll work out... we'll see.
Received the invoice email for $305. That's fair. Paid it and I'll still use these guys.
They're honest.
They're honest.
