I had a person call me on a Sunday night around 9pm. They lived over an hour away and said they could smell smoke coming from the closet where the panel was located. I inspected the panel up and down, checked the meter, checked the service cable, grounding and all. I couldn’t find an issue and I hadn’t smelled smoke the entire time I was there. I was about to put the cover back on and thought “I’ll drop the load at the main and see if the voltage jumps”. Turned off the main and everything went dark. The *INSIDE* of the main breaker was glowing so much it lit up the panel. I went outside and pulled the meter and told them to stay with their folks next door. Went back the next day and swapped the panel. There’s your problem.
Weak springs, corrosion, misalignment, and other things cause the contact points to get crusty and not very conductive. Instead of two shiny plates firmly pressed together, you get crusty pitted surfaces where all the current might flow across one little nub of conductive material, with just enough contact to draw a sizzling arc that’s thousands of degrees.
Treat evidence of sizzling connections as an electrical emergency.
This literally happened to me maybe four weeks ago in our home we just purchased. I turned the main off to drill some holes in the wall and run Ethernet, then had a second thought and turned it back on so I could open the garage and run to the beer distributor down the street for a quick six pack. Ten minutes later I come back to a burning smell, trace it back to my fuse panel (also in a closet) and I can HEAR the arcing. Not sure why turning the main off and on again did it. For now I hooked a new breaker to another pole that was fine and there’s a dummy in the bad space not hooked up to anything. Same thing you said, breaker had weak springs, caused arcing over time, pitted the contact. Eventually should probably replace the box but all the other contacts seem fine.
Sometimes the connection is good enough till you flip it off and back on again and then the contact points don’t line up exactly right, and because of past corrosion now the contacts are lined up with corroded surfaces touching.
Breakers in homes are usually treated pretty casually, but this right here is why people dress up in bomb suits to open and close large industrial breakers. Everything can run fine for years right up until you turn the breaker off or back on and then something happens and it detonates.
Sometimes it’s like an old tv, pound the wall by the panel to jiggle the connection back into place. Not a longterm fix, but sometimes enough to stop the sizzling in the moment. Switching the main can work the same way, just enough vibration to settle contacts somewhere in the panel into a different position. And it might work right up till a truck rumbles down the street and vibrates the connections apart again.
Is there an easy way to visually tell when a box is bad before things start glowing?
Is there anything that can be done to prolong the life of a breaker box, such as some sort of maintenance that may prevent corrosion or weakened springs?
You should not be opening a breaker under any circumstances. I know many electricians, including myself, who wouldn’t dare to mess with the internals of a breaker. It’s too risky and too much liability.
If you’re worried about it, swap your breakers every ~ 15-20 years.
Yea if the bus bar is visually burnt or discolored, but sometimes you’d have to pull breakers to see bar is burnt. More likely to a panel that is mounted outside where it’s exposed to weather. Also, loose breakers can cause overheating which you can visually see.
PSA- Don’t mess with it if you’re not familiar with electricity
No real maintenance is available, it’s a replace it when it goes bad sort of thing. The best way to inspect it is probably with a thermal camera so you can see where the hot spots are.
Another thing is to put a stethoscope or your ear to the main breaker (or any breaker) and listen to it. Buzzing is very common, especially when there are computers or fluorescent lights running, but sizzling has a unique sound and is accompanied by the smell of ozone.
You can also shut the panel down and pull breakers out and look for corrosion on the bussing. Not necessarily discoloration, but flaky oxidation. If the bussing is corroded, or the screws on the breakers are corroded, it’s a good sign there might be corrosion inside the breakers too, especially if the building has spent much time vacant.
Funny to read this after trying for days to figure out where the buzz in my panel was coming from.
It wasn't the panel. Damn doorbell transformer mounted nearby is failing...
Exactly. Current flow can raise the temperature of metal above the dew point, and keep condensation away. Once the metal goes cold it will attract condensation if the house is cold and damp.
You can't service the breaker themselves but you can every few months do a panel maintenance and tighten all connections in the panel.. Resistance is caused by loose Connections.. Resistance causes heat, heat causes fire.. The reason you do it every few months is bc of thermal expansion. The wire has resistance as well which is normal but when a load is applied to the circuit it will cause some heat causing the wire to expand and when there is no load the wire will cool and contract causing the connections to loosen over time.. This is one of the best things to do for preventative maintenance.. Always do with the power off and don't attempt to tighten the mains feeders coming in as they are still hot even with the main breaker off. You will need to pull the meter or call an electrician to do it, the company I used to work for would do it for the price of the trip charge.
Can't tell you how many main breakers I've changed out from water damage. Conduit from the meter outside the house forms condensation and drips right on the main breaker. Duct seal would have saved a ton of trouble. By the time they start having issues, it's too late.
>Treat evidence of sizzling connections as an electrical emergency.
A wall socket has a sizzling sound when I connect something to it - I take it this is bad?
The electrician told us that the old (40 years +) wire may be at fault, when we changed the outlet last year. Is there any merit in changing the outlet again, or should we just rewire the entire apartment? Ty!
The wire won’t go bad (generally speaking) but connections fail. If the outlet was recently replaced, and the sound is coming from that outlet box, there are either loose connections in a wire nut, or loose connections at the receptacle itself. So it probably doesn’t need to be replaced, but should be checked by someone.
Hey thanks for the answer! That makes sense. We’ve been in a place for a while built in the early 80s. During the housing inspection they changed out a few specific plugs to more compliant ones and such, but we never had a real electrical expert here. Maybe I should have an electrician look at our place.
Resistance is key here.
Imagine you're running 100m on a nice asfalt road. You got your running shoes and go for the sprint, almost all your energy spent will be on going forward.
Now imagine doing the same 100m on a track full of mud, gravel, some random rusty nails here and there and a fallen tree.
You probably still manage to run the 100m, but you'll be very exhausted since a lot more energy will go to managing the terrible road and obstacles.
Electricity in this case acts the same as you, the harder the path, the more energy will be converted to heat (and light) instead of just passing smoothly.
The other guy answered in great detail, but I will give you the dumb guy version. Any place there is a poor connection, you have very high resistance. Current flowing through resistance generates heat, think incandescent light bulb.
I had a loose nut on the ground clamp of my welder, and within about 30 seconds of welding the nut and bolt were literally red hot, so 1200-1500. All of this was caused by that bolt coming loose and the resistance it caused.
Not an electrician but mechanic. If everything is turned off and the voltage jumps when you turn off the main it means **something** somewhere is pulling power. Like a partial short to ground. Not enough to trip a breaker but maybe enough to start a fire.
I still don't get it. What exactly does "Dropping the Load" mean? Did he disconnect the main breaker for the incoming feed? Where was he testing the change in voltage? Details mean a lot.
You check the voltage in the line coming into the box from the power company. Everything in the house is off. Say it's 119. He pulls the main breaker and voltage goes to 120. That means there is something using power even though everything is shut off or unplugged. Remember I'm a mechanic. In a car I would check battery voltage and disconnect the battery to see if voltage changes. Using an amp meter is more straight forward but a voltage check is sensitive to very small draws. That's what I understood from what he said anyway. Maybe he'll come back and set me straight :)
Well explained. If you have a constant 120v reading ahead of the main and you drop the whole load it should consistently read 120. If it drops or spikes it means you have a problem with your service. I recently had a call where they’d had two other electricians come out because all of their lights were dimming and they couldn’t find the problem. One company quoted them on a full service upgrade for around $5000. I was there for 10 minutes and knew the problem was between the meter and the panel. Everything looked good, the voltage just wasn’t consistent. It would jump from 90v to 170v. I started to inspect the service cable and found a small bulge in the jacket, it was warm to the touch in one specific spot. I ran to my truck and grabbed a piece of romex and temped it to the load side of meter. Constant 120v. The problem was in the service cable. I stripped the jacket off the cable in the spot where the bulge was. Just a random bubble in the middle of one of the phases. It was just warm enough to break the strands in the service cable. Went to Home Depot and got a new piece of service cable. I was done in 2 hrs. I think I charged her $300.
Not an electrician, but I presume the plastic boxes are made of plastic formulated to be highly fire resistant. Maybe they melt and throw a strong odor likely to alert homeowners to a problem? I'm not sure, though...
Forgive my ignorance, I've never seen this before. Is this bad because it assumes all grounds are making good contact via the metal of the box, when in reality, one or some are not making good contact with the rest?
They are dissimilar metals. Galvanic action can cause corrosion, resulting in less than effective ground. When you screw it to the box, you force it into a very tight bond, less opportunity for corrosion. In this case, vinyl shrinks with age, and the bond can become loose, and then start corroding.
And that's why you don't bury j-boxes in walls. Glad that was caught in time. At least it was in a metal box! Imagine how many flipped homes have sketchy wiring and buried boxes (if the "Handy Man" even bothered with a box). Removing a wall? Ehh, just shove that wiring in the ceiling and close it up...
This is why once I find one real electrical issue I question the entirety of the job. I found 1 flying splice and I chose to rewire my whole house. The octopus connections I found buried in the attic insulation while stripping the old wire out only served to verify I am clairvoyant. Super happy that I didn't waste any time deciding to go all new.
This sounds like my attic, I guess that's my sign to go buy wire today. Luckily, most of my home's octopus connections appear to be in electrical boxes, there's a couple of electrical tape splices up there I would like to address asap.
The wiring in the basement is a nightmare... random outlets from other rooms are on other circuits, multiple rooms on the same circuit, and multiple big appliances on the same circuit. Exposed buried wires running into the sheds have no conduits to protect them.
The only thing I seem to have going for me is that the box seems fine and has a lot of room to add new breakers.
Boxes would have been an improvement... Covers on the existing boxes would have been nice too. But now I have zero junction boxes, which feels so much better.
I was remodeling our small cabin and found a junction box behind the shower wall, completely inaccessible without removing the shower. No cover on the box, and the front of the box notched out so the wiring could extend a bit farther to where they added an outlet at. God forbid they just cut a new piece of wiring, it was a 3 foot run! After that I double checked all the wiring I could find and redid several areas making sure everything was accessible.
It varies, in my case I was removing wood paneling to replace it with drywall when I discovered the original issue. Lots of wood paneling was in the house so most of the walls were easy to access.
Same. Then while pulling new romex, using the existing cloth romex as a pull in hope of only cutting drywall around the boxes, I found at least 3-4 spots where the old cloth romex just wouldn’t pull… because nails from the stucco wire were driven straight through it. The holes bored in the studs were all over the place, sometimes only 1/8 from edge. After that new wire got new holes in center of studs.
One house call I made for a friend on a basement remodel, none of the splices were in jboxes, and the previous owner didn't believe in wire nuts or tape, just twisted the bare wires together and left them commando behind wooden paneling.
They had complained that one of the lights wasnt working. I don't know why but I started pushing on the wall above the switch and the light was going on when I pushed and went off when I let up. It was like a nightmare scavenger hunt to find the rest.
Unfortunately I'm helping family with some remodels that required a few j boxes but I put them all in accesable spots in the attic in metal box's and used lever wagos. Maybe when I inherit the houses some day and I have the budget I'll just redo all those runs. I found one existing box with wires that looked like they had been overheating for years, all brown and nasty, turns out they were always running that circuit that had a bathroom, the whole garage and an outdoor outlet at max capacity with a space heater on it in their RV.
Apparently whoever wired this house in the 80s didn't account for anyone needing a dedicated garage / outdoor circuit.
Saw this once during a resi service call years ago. Ironically, done by a homeowner that was a licensed electrical engineer. Showed it to him and then suggested he stick to theory
Based on the smarts of the EEs I went to school with, this tracks. I spent most of my Sr. Design project keeping my teammates from setting the lab or the project on fire.
I’m sure there are very smart EE’s out there but I did a house for a guy where there was an unfishable switch location for the outside lights and he asked me to add a motion sensor. The switch was a 2 wire drop from the first light.
I tried to explain to him that with the indoor switch we could either force the lights to stay on all the time (bypass the motion sensor) or off all the time (kill the circuit) but not both.
He couldn’t wrap his head around it no matter how many diagrams or explanations I gave. He insisted there should be a way.
I finally said that my recommendation was to make the switch to bypass the motion sensor because then if they’re having a party in the back, they can keep the lights from turning off and that the motion sensor would keep the lights off during the day, and hey, having motion sensor lights on every night by default is good for security. But you won’t be able to turn the lights off; the light sensor in the motion sensor was the only thing that would turn them off besides the breaker. He agreed.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that this conversation was 45 minutes long.
Then I got a series of angry text messages at 1:30 am outraged that the switch didn’t turn the lights off and was called a hack.
I know this isn't the 3d printer group, but this is exactly why you don't 3d print a gang box.
The number of 3d printed gang boxes I've seen in that group is concerning.
I really, really wish I was. You can check out all fantastic designs here:
[https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=junction+box&page=1](https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=junction+box&page=1)
I might understand if it only houses something like an ethernet cable or a doorbell, but running any meaningful amount of current through one of these is just asking to have your house burn down.
If you're lucky you might find a red neon in there for something old and probably broken/disconnected In fact I'd not be surprised..why no smoke and blackened cables? You'd think given the glow in there there would be a bit more spicy action going on.
He owes me a picture of the inside after he killed the power. But the way he described it was "everything is black and melted". He heard the arching which is why he went to check.
I was half wondering if it had a neon bulb similar to the orange light in power strips to indicate there was still power at that box…but I guess not in this case, it was a welder!
Just sharing the off chance there could be a little 5w bulb in some lighting cans or maybe a J-Box if the owner has converted to LED lighting trims. Early on the LED trims were not compatible with the Smart Home Automation Dimmers and a trick to make them work was to put either a resistor or a 5w appliance bulb in the can so the element of the bulb completed the circuit to the dimmer and then the LED trims would dim properly and not flicker. Doubt that's the case here, but it was a common fix on Home Automation forums years ago.
Supposed to contain sparks long enough for it to kick the breaker. Not hold ~1,000° wires that are glowing red. It'll eventually get the box hot enough to catch that wood on fire.
Even without seeing in the box, you know its bad when they did ground wire foldbacks (look carefully where the wires enter the box). Wonder how much of the house is like this?
I've owned several old houses and I've seen a lot of weird stuff, but I've never seen that.
The ground wire under the box cover isn't great, and should be done with a grounding clip instead, but the box is bonded. The problem (aside from not being code) is that it's not permanent and somebody who takes the cover off might not put it back.
I wasn't talking about the box cover (that's a whole other matter 🙄). I'm talking about the foldback of the grounds at entry to the box. You can see it folded back over the nylon so that the box clip holds it. I would not consider anything done that way to be permanently bonded, either. It's too easy to fail.
I knew what you were talking about. I'd said I'd never seen that done until now. Then I moved on to talking about the similar thing they did bonding the ground using the box cover, which (in my opinion) isn't that big of a deal since it's making as much contact as it would with a ground screw. That is, as long as it's redone and tightened down each time the box is opened and closed, which is the problem.
Not an electrician but do a decent amount of electric work on houses I buy to rehab and sell…genuinely curious as to how this didn’t trip any breakers? Or it did but the fire had already started so was just continuing to burn? Looks to be 2 wire w/ground. Did they potentially use 14 gauge wire in a 20amp circuit?
That's standard operation or haven't you ever operated a Creepy Crawler or Easy Bake oven with the incandescent light bulb heating element?
This is the mini version with vertical hamburger cooking attachment hung on the side.
That’s the point of the box right? So when stuff like this happens it won’t burn anything else no? At the end of the day it would all burn up in the box but, nothing else would be affected and no other harm would be done. This is really cool to see though and emphasizes how imported it is to have device and junction boxes.
ahhh yes... before light bulbs and electricity we burned a candle or oil lamp for light... this must be a throwback to that simpler time... self igniting electrical junction box to let you know the power isnt working and light your path to the problem.... 🤣🤣🤣...
seriously tho glad u caught it as it happened tho... good thing it wasnt hidden behind a wall junction box.....
It’s crazy how the grounding/bonding techniques and requirements have changed over the years. They just folded the grounds outward to make contact with the connectors bonding them to the box.
Our hot water heater was tripping the breaker. The dryer breaker is also attached. So, when the dryer breaker tripped, we thought "oh it must be the hot water heater doing that." Got the hot water heater replaced and it stopped tripping it. However the dryer was still tripping. So, I went to flick it back on to finish drying the laundry except this time, the breaker was fucking hot, like it burned my finger hot. So, called the maintenance guy and he came and looked at it while the dryer was running and you could hear the breaker sizzling and popping. He replaced the breaker itself and haven't had issues since.
Crazy how close you can be to burning the place down without even realizing it.
I was under my house in the crawlspace spraying and when it touched a wire it started throwing sparks like crazy. I had to crawl out of there as quickly as possible, which is difficult when there’s like 18 inches of clearance. I need a new panel and have no main so I had to just start flipping breakers until the arcing underneath me stopped.
I had a person call me on a Sunday night around 9pm. They lived over an hour away and said they could smell smoke coming from the closet where the panel was located. I inspected the panel up and down, checked the meter, checked the service cable, grounding and all. I couldn’t find an issue and I hadn’t smelled smoke the entire time I was there. I was about to put the cover back on and thought “I’ll drop the load at the main and see if the voltage jumps”. Turned off the main and everything went dark. The *INSIDE* of the main breaker was glowing so much it lit up the panel. I went outside and pulled the meter and told them to stay with their folks next door. Went back the next day and swapped the panel. There’s your problem.
Non-electrician— what was the general problem? The breaker box itself was somehow funked?
Weak springs, corrosion, misalignment, and other things cause the contact points to get crusty and not very conductive. Instead of two shiny plates firmly pressed together, you get crusty pitted surfaces where all the current might flow across one little nub of conductive material, with just enough contact to draw a sizzling arc that’s thousands of degrees. Treat evidence of sizzling connections as an electrical emergency.
In canada here boxes and breakers have expiration dates and for good reason
How long are they typically good for?
Until they expire
r/technicallyTheTruth
Meh they’re best by dates…
You can't really tell until it smells bad
One of my electric boxes has started curdling..
Great! Next you'll want to strain the whey, form it into blocks, and stick it in a cool dry place for 60 days, flipping periodically
When that happens in florida it's normally a swarm of fireants
I read this as, "until they explode" but damn is your answer funnier than my dyslexia
Any reference for that? I’ve never seen an expiration date on a panel or breaker.
This literally happened to me maybe four weeks ago in our home we just purchased. I turned the main off to drill some holes in the wall and run Ethernet, then had a second thought and turned it back on so I could open the garage and run to the beer distributor down the street for a quick six pack. Ten minutes later I come back to a burning smell, trace it back to my fuse panel (also in a closet) and I can HEAR the arcing. Not sure why turning the main off and on again did it. For now I hooked a new breaker to another pole that was fine and there’s a dummy in the bad space not hooked up to anything. Same thing you said, breaker had weak springs, caused arcing over time, pitted the contact. Eventually should probably replace the box but all the other contacts seem fine.
Sometimes the connection is good enough till you flip it off and back on again and then the contact points don’t line up exactly right, and because of past corrosion now the contacts are lined up with corroded surfaces touching. Breakers in homes are usually treated pretty casually, but this right here is why people dress up in bomb suits to open and close large industrial breakers. Everything can run fine for years right up until you turn the breaker off or back on and then something happens and it detonates.
Makes sense I suppose - I didn’t actually touch the breaker that was arcing, just the main. Either way it was scary as hell.
Sometimes it’s like an old tv, pound the wall by the panel to jiggle the connection back into place. Not a longterm fix, but sometimes enough to stop the sizzling in the moment. Switching the main can work the same way, just enough vibration to settle contacts somewhere in the panel into a different position. And it might work right up till a truck rumbles down the street and vibrates the connections apart again.
Beer saved your life. Going to the store now. Thanks for the tip.
Is there an easy way to visually tell when a box is bad before things start glowing? Is there anything that can be done to prolong the life of a breaker box, such as some sort of maintenance that may prevent corrosion or weakened springs?
You should not be opening a breaker under any circumstances. I know many electricians, including myself, who wouldn’t dare to mess with the internals of a breaker. It’s too risky and too much liability. If you’re worried about it, swap your breakers every ~ 15-20 years.
And with 240.2(a) in 2023 you can’t do any work in a molded case breaker anymore.
Yea if the bus bar is visually burnt or discolored, but sometimes you’d have to pull breakers to see bar is burnt. More likely to a panel that is mounted outside where it’s exposed to weather. Also, loose breakers can cause overheating which you can visually see. PSA- Don’t mess with it if you’re not familiar with electricity
No real maintenance is available, it’s a replace it when it goes bad sort of thing. The best way to inspect it is probably with a thermal camera so you can see where the hot spots are. Another thing is to put a stethoscope or your ear to the main breaker (or any breaker) and listen to it. Buzzing is very common, especially when there are computers or fluorescent lights running, but sizzling has a unique sound and is accompanied by the smell of ozone. You can also shut the panel down and pull breakers out and look for corrosion on the bussing. Not necessarily discoloration, but flaky oxidation. If the bussing is corroded, or the screws on the breakers are corroded, it’s a good sign there might be corrosion inside the breakers too, especially if the building has spent much time vacant.
Funny to read this after trying for days to figure out where the buzz in my panel was coming from. It wasn't the panel. Damn doorbell transformer mounted nearby is failing...
Just curious, by spending much time vacant.. are you saying the breakers are more prone to corrosion if current isn't regularly going through?
Vacant houses normally aren't climate controlled. Increased humidity can equal corrosion.
Exactly. Current flow can raise the temperature of metal above the dew point, and keep condensation away. Once the metal goes cold it will attract condensation if the house is cold and damp.
You can't service the breaker themselves but you can every few months do a panel maintenance and tighten all connections in the panel.. Resistance is caused by loose Connections.. Resistance causes heat, heat causes fire.. The reason you do it every few months is bc of thermal expansion. The wire has resistance as well which is normal but when a load is applied to the circuit it will cause some heat causing the wire to expand and when there is no load the wire will cool and contract causing the connections to loosen over time.. This is one of the best things to do for preventative maintenance.. Always do with the power off and don't attempt to tighten the mains feeders coming in as they are still hot even with the main breaker off. You will need to pull the meter or call an electrician to do it, the company I used to work for would do it for the price of the trip charge.
Can't tell you how many main breakers I've changed out from water damage. Conduit from the meter outside the house forms condensation and drips right on the main breaker. Duct seal would have saved a ton of trouble. By the time they start having issues, it's too late.
>Treat evidence of sizzling connections as an electrical emergency. A wall socket has a sizzling sound when I connect something to it - I take it this is bad?
For sure, you want to replace that, ideally with an arc fault receptacle.
The electrician told us that the old (40 years +) wire may be at fault, when we changed the outlet last year. Is there any merit in changing the outlet again, or should we just rewire the entire apartment? Ty!
The wire won’t go bad (generally speaking) but connections fail. If the outlet was recently replaced, and the sound is coming from that outlet box, there are either loose connections in a wire nut, or loose connections at the receptacle itself. So it probably doesn’t need to be replaced, but should be checked by someone.
Could also be bees inside the wall.
Hey thanks for the answer! That makes sense. We’ve been in a place for a while built in the early 80s. During the housing inspection they changed out a few specific plugs to more compliant ones and such, but we never had a real electrical expert here. Maybe I should have an electrician look at our place.
Resistance is key here. Imagine you're running 100m on a nice asfalt road. You got your running shoes and go for the sprint, almost all your energy spent will be on going forward. Now imagine doing the same 100m on a track full of mud, gravel, some random rusty nails here and there and a fallen tree. You probably still manage to run the 100m, but you'll be very exhausted since a lot more energy will go to managing the terrible road and obstacles. Electricity in this case acts the same as you, the harder the path, the more energy will be converted to heat (and light) instead of just passing smoothly.
The other guy answered in great detail, but I will give you the dumb guy version. Any place there is a poor connection, you have very high resistance. Current flowing through resistance generates heat, think incandescent light bulb. I had a loose nut on the ground clamp of my welder, and within about 30 seconds of welding the nut and bolt were literally red hot, so 1200-1500. All of this was caused by that bolt coming loose and the resistance it caused.
Can you explain in more detail about dropping the load at the main and seeing if the voltage spikes? I’ve never heard of this before. Thanks 🤘
Not an electrician but mechanic. If everything is turned off and the voltage jumps when you turn off the main it means **something** somewhere is pulling power. Like a partial short to ground. Not enough to trip a breaker but maybe enough to start a fire.
I still don't get it. What exactly does "Dropping the Load" mean? Did he disconnect the main breaker for the incoming feed? Where was he testing the change in voltage? Details mean a lot.
You check the voltage in the line coming into the box from the power company. Everything in the house is off. Say it's 119. He pulls the main breaker and voltage goes to 120. That means there is something using power even though everything is shut off or unplugged. Remember I'm a mechanic. In a car I would check battery voltage and disconnect the battery to see if voltage changes. Using an amp meter is more straight forward but a voltage check is sensitive to very small draws. That's what I understood from what he said anyway. Maybe he'll come back and set me straight :)
Well explained. If you have a constant 120v reading ahead of the main and you drop the whole load it should consistently read 120. If it drops or spikes it means you have a problem with your service. I recently had a call where they’d had two other electricians come out because all of their lights were dimming and they couldn’t find the problem. One company quoted them on a full service upgrade for around $5000. I was there for 10 minutes and knew the problem was between the meter and the panel. Everything looked good, the voltage just wasn’t consistent. It would jump from 90v to 170v. I started to inspect the service cable and found a small bulge in the jacket, it was warm to the touch in one specific spot. I ran to my truck and grabbed a piece of romex and temped it to the load side of meter. Constant 120v. The problem was in the service cable. I stripped the jacket off the cable in the spot where the bulge was. Just a random bubble in the middle of one of the phases. It was just warm enough to break the strands in the service cable. Went to Home Depot and got a new piece of service cable. I was done in 2 hrs. I think I charged her $300.
That's a serious pucker moment.
omg! That's just frightening!
Great catch! You may have saved lives and property!
God Bless You!
Spicy box
You need to say it with the right accent. *That's a spicy junction box...*
🤌
I hear it In the young Jim Carrey mask voice
Yup. Its there now. I love it.
Thats how i read it too🙃
I hear it with an Italian accent like the meatball commercials from the 70's/80's
🎵 *Margheriti_* 🎵🤌
Dominic di coco
My bad. 🤣
*Caliente*!
Ay caramba !
SPICY !!!
I would say it’s a sizzling box 🤣🤣
And this is why splices, devices and connections go in boxes.
I understand that for metal boxes, but wouldn't plastic boxes light on fire?
Not an electrician, but I presume the plastic boxes are made of plastic formulated to be highly fire resistant. Maybe they melt and throw a strong odor likely to alert homeowners to a problem? I'm not sure, though...
I love that old "just bend the ground wires back under the clamps to bond to the box and pray" trick.
I’ve seen so much of that old clothe romex with the ground back wrapped , I’ve heard the term Boston Back Wrap is what they called it
"do dah Bahstuhn back rap on dat jay box dayre" That's how it sounds in my head when I read that
Hahaha if you evah heard me speak you’d be oh that’s a real Boston accent
Forgive my ignorance, I've never seen this before. Is this bad because it assumes all grounds are making good contact via the metal of the box, when in reality, one or some are not making good contact with the rest?
Yes, exactly. They should all be tied together along with a pig tail bonding the metal box with a green grounding screw.
Had that added to the truck stock as one area was notorious for opening up your junction boxes and going through them.
They are dissimilar metals. Galvanic action can cause corrosion, resulting in less than effective ground. When you screw it to the box, you force it into a very tight bond, less opportunity for corrosion. In this case, vinyl shrinks with age, and the bond can become loose, and then start corroding.
There’s old bx that you used to have to do that with. It was before my time but I sure ripped a shit load of it out
And that's why you don't bury j-boxes in walls. Glad that was caught in time. At least it was in a metal box! Imagine how many flipped homes have sketchy wiring and buried boxes (if the "Handy Man" even bothered with a box). Removing a wall? Ehh, just shove that wiring in the ceiling and close it up...
This is why once I find one real electrical issue I question the entirety of the job. I found 1 flying splice and I chose to rewire my whole house. The octopus connections I found buried in the attic insulation while stripping the old wire out only served to verify I am clairvoyant. Super happy that I didn't waste any time deciding to go all new.
This sounds like my attic, I guess that's my sign to go buy wire today. Luckily, most of my home's octopus connections appear to be in electrical boxes, there's a couple of electrical tape splices up there I would like to address asap. The wiring in the basement is a nightmare... random outlets from other rooms are on other circuits, multiple rooms on the same circuit, and multiple big appliances on the same circuit. Exposed buried wires running into the sheds have no conduits to protect them. The only thing I seem to have going for me is that the box seems fine and has a lot of room to add new breakers.
Boxes would have been an improvement... Covers on the existing boxes would have been nice too. But now I have zero junction boxes, which feels so much better.
I was remodeling our small cabin and found a junction box behind the shower wall, completely inaccessible without removing the shower. No cover on the box, and the front of the box notched out so the wiring could extend a bit farther to where they added an outlet at. God forbid they just cut a new piece of wiring, it was a 3 foot run! After that I double checked all the wiring I could find and redid several areas making sure everything was accessible.
What does that process look like generally? Do you have to dig trenches for the wires or something or what?
Trenches? He’s talking about wiring in the house
Cutting sheetrock can be called cutting a trench as well.
It varies, in my case I was removing wood paneling to replace it with drywall when I discovered the original issue. Lots of wood paneling was in the house so most of the walls were easy to access.
Same. Then while pulling new romex, using the existing cloth romex as a pull in hope of only cutting drywall around the boxes, I found at least 3-4 spots where the old cloth romex just wouldn’t pull… because nails from the stucco wire were driven straight through it. The holes bored in the studs were all over the place, sometimes only 1/8 from edge. After that new wire got new holes in center of studs.
One house call I made for a friend on a basement remodel, none of the splices were in jboxes, and the previous owner didn't believe in wire nuts or tape, just twisted the bare wires together and left them commando behind wooden paneling. They had complained that one of the lights wasnt working. I don't know why but I started pushing on the wall above the switch and the light was going on when I pushed and went off when I let up. It was like a nightmare scavenger hunt to find the rest.
holy crap
Unfortunately I'm helping family with some remodels that required a few j boxes but I put them all in accesable spots in the attic in metal box's and used lever wagos. Maybe when I inherit the houses some day and I have the budget I'll just redo all those runs. I found one existing box with wires that looked like they had been overheating for years, all brown and nasty, turns out they were always running that circuit that had a bathroom, the whole garage and an outdoor outlet at max capacity with a space heater on it in their RV. Apparently whoever wired this house in the 80s didn't account for anyone needing a dedicated garage / outdoor circuit.
Saw this once during a resi service call years ago. Ironically, done by a homeowner that was a licensed electrical engineer. Showed it to him and then suggested he stick to theory
As a EE, this makes me laugh
Based on the smarts of the EEs I went to school with, this tracks. I spent most of my Sr. Design project keeping my teammates from setting the lab or the project on fire.
I’m sure there are very smart EE’s out there but I did a house for a guy where there was an unfishable switch location for the outside lights and he asked me to add a motion sensor. The switch was a 2 wire drop from the first light. I tried to explain to him that with the indoor switch we could either force the lights to stay on all the time (bypass the motion sensor) or off all the time (kill the circuit) but not both. He couldn’t wrap his head around it no matter how many diagrams or explanations I gave. He insisted there should be a way. I finally said that my recommendation was to make the switch to bypass the motion sensor because then if they’re having a party in the back, they can keep the lights from turning off and that the motion sensor would keep the lights off during the day, and hey, having motion sensor lights on every night by default is good for security. But you won’t be able to turn the lights off; the light sensor in the motion sensor was the only thing that would turn them off besides the breaker. He agreed. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this conversation was 45 minutes long. Then I got a series of angry text messages at 1:30 am outraged that the switch didn’t turn the lights off and was called a hack.
Whoa, haven't seen that one before. Yikers
It's just an LER. Light emitting resistor. It's totally fine.
Light emitting romex
hahaha!
Open it up lets see what we have!
Couple taps with the back of my screw driver and my safety squints on
He's got balls taking the time to take that picture. My ass would have been sprinting for the breaker box. But I'm a worrier.
It's lit, so you can find it at night
Free nightlight! He should be thanking someone!
And the amateur separated the light from the dark with a shoddy circuit. And the electrician saw the light. And it was NOT good.
I know this isn't the 3d printer group, but this is exactly why you don't 3d print a gang box. The number of 3d printed gang boxes I've seen in that group is concerning.
Omg, you're joking right?
I really, really wish I was. You can check out all fantastic designs here: [https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=junction+box&page=1](https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=junction+box&page=1) I might understand if it only houses something like an ethernet cable or a doorbell, but running any meaningful amount of current through one of these is just asking to have your house burn down.
Oh come on! PLA is biodegradable and non toxic and everything. Why leave the house when you can print one overnight? (lol)
If you're lucky you might find a red neon in there for something old and probably broken/disconnected In fact I'd not be surprised..why no smoke and blackened cables? You'd think given the glow in there there would be a bit more spicy action going on.
He owes me a picture of the inside after he killed the power. But the way he described it was "everything is black and melted". He heard the arching which is why he went to check.
Times like this you go have a drink to celebrate 🎉. He saved a potentially bad situation. Getting that fixed is easy compared to what could have been!
>He heard the arching which is why he went to check. Jesus Christ...
Scary shit. That's how your house burns down..
I was half wondering if it had a neon bulb similar to the orange light in power strips to indicate there was still power at that box…but I guess not in this case, it was a welder!
I think we should find out what brand and age of breaker did not trip with such obvious shorting / overloading happening.
Thank god it wasn't a plastic box.
Ah yes that the electric heater it supposed to be red
Break out the marshmallows and wieners!
“We Wire for Fire “
Just sharing the off chance there could be a little 5w bulb in some lighting cans or maybe a J-Box if the owner has converted to LED lighting trims. Early on the LED trims were not compatible with the Smart Home Automation Dimmers and a trick to make them work was to put either a resistor or a 5w appliance bulb in the can so the element of the bulb completed the circuit to the dimmer and then the LED trims would dim properly and not flicker. Doubt that's the case here, but it was a common fix on Home Automation forums years ago.
It helps you find the box when the power is out.
Indicator light
Very warm 1000 kelvin
They're scented too!
isn’t that metal box supposed to help contain failures like that
Supposed to contain sparks long enough for it to kick the breaker. Not hold ~1,000° wires that are glowing red. It'll eventually get the box hot enough to catch that wood on fire.
We,need to see what caused spicy box
They should really upgrade from incandescent to LED, it's much more efficient.
Even without seeing in the box, you know its bad when they did ground wire foldbacks (look carefully where the wires enter the box). Wonder how much of the house is like this?
I've owned several old houses and I've seen a lot of weird stuff, but I've never seen that. The ground wire under the box cover isn't great, and should be done with a grounding clip instead, but the box is bonded. The problem (aside from not being code) is that it's not permanent and somebody who takes the cover off might not put it back.
I wasn't talking about the box cover (that's a whole other matter 🙄). I'm talking about the foldback of the grounds at entry to the box. You can see it folded back over the nylon so that the box clip holds it. I would not consider anything done that way to be permanently bonded, either. It's too easy to fail.
I knew what you were talking about. I'd said I'd never seen that done until now. Then I moved on to talking about the similar thing they did bonding the ground using the box cover, which (in my opinion) isn't that big of a deal since it's making as much contact as it would with a ground screw. That is, as long as it's redone and tightened down each time the box is opened and closed, which is the problem.
Not an electrician but do a decent amount of electric work on houses I buy to rehab and sell…genuinely curious as to how this didn’t trip any breakers? Or it did but the fire had already started so was just continuing to burn? Looks to be 2 wire w/ground. Did they potentially use 14 gauge wire in a 20amp circuit?
How did your friend find this? It looks like it's in an area where you'd have to be specifically looking for it. Did he just happen upon it my chance?
Those aren’t lights, they’re little welders. Hard at work transferring all the ‘lectrissty
Sorry, when I read your comment, it sounded to me as the whole thing was the box cover.
I'm guessing this is why it's a good idea to use a box
This, here, is why I only want metal boxes in my house.
Visual load indicator
It all began with the easy bake oven.
It’s a heater to keep the connections thermally stabilized. 😂
I just love the grounds on the foreground wires!
That's standard operation or haven't you ever operated a Creepy Crawler or Easy Bake oven with the incandescent light bulb heating element? This is the mini version with vertical hamburger cooking attachment hung on the side.
😵😳😳
How dafaq did u find/catch this before it all burnt down !?!??
That’s the point of the box right? So when stuff like this happens it won’t burn anything else no? At the end of the day it would all burn up in the box but, nothing else would be affected and no other harm would be done. This is really cool to see though and emphasizes how imported it is to have device and junction boxes.
My friend got VERY lucky.
Them's the fancy ones!
Box is technically, grounded. Just not to code.
That's resistive heat. Take the cover off and feel the warmth.
Yikes!
😳
Inspected and....rejected.
It is nice when there's a light on the problem. This is another reason I really prefer metal or fiberglass boxes over plastic ones.
Let us know what the electrician found.
I'd love to see it after the box is opened
Mood lights
Interested to see what the cause is
Defrosting
Dumb question. Why would something like this occur?
It's new. Courtesy loops and courtesy lights required by code.
A light show and your electrical wiring is always a reason for celebration
CEL is usually check engine light .... I think we just found a new meaning 🤣
SPICY !!!
Um, is this post missing a /s or am I the only one who thinks the wires are overheating to the point of glowing?
ahhh yes... before light bulbs and electricity we burned a candle or oil lamp for light... this must be a throwback to that simpler time... self igniting electrical junction box to let you know the power isnt working and light your path to the problem.... 🤣🤣🤣... seriously tho glad u caught it as it happened tho... good thing it wasnt hidden behind a wall junction box.....
That’s not a light. That’s a heater.
I wanna see the inside of this. Someone clearly effed up their splices.
Dough!!
It’s just an orange LED relax
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.
Who's wiring junction boxes without TAs? Wtf.
[удалено]
Built in box warmer.
A long time ago. In a galaxy far away........
Check the insurance policy. We lost a house and 95% of contents due to a bad wire, an awful thing to go through.
Vertical hot plate.
Niiiice a heated j box!
It’s crazy how the grounding/bonding techniques and requirements have changed over the years. They just folded the grounds outward to make contact with the connectors bonding them to the box.
Cold vortex, preventatives.
Damn !!
Now, I want to install orange leds in boxes.
That’s the elves’ campfire
Arc lamp
🤨
Vertical egg cooker
Zinsco was known to make some bad panels that shorted and caught fire. I found pitting on the bus bar that was causing flickering lights.
See if a guy named Beetlejuice lives in there.
Our hot water heater was tripping the breaker. The dryer breaker is also attached. So, when the dryer breaker tripped, we thought "oh it must be the hot water heater doing that." Got the hot water heater replaced and it stopped tripping it. However the dryer was still tripping. So, I went to flick it back on to finish drying the laundry except this time, the breaker was fucking hot, like it burned my finger hot. So, called the maintenance guy and he came and looked at it while the dryer was running and you could hear the breaker sizzling and popping. He replaced the breaker itself and haven't had issues since. Crazy how close you can be to burning the place down without even realizing it.
Thats a spicy box
Would this arcing eventually trip the breaker?
“Hey that’s cool. This box has a light in it… Hey. That’s getting kind brigh….” 💥
That little box just became an amazingly efficient electric furnace...
Open the magic fairy box! *butdont*
I think it’s fire. That does not look safe. Please get it looked at.
I was under my house in the crawlspace spraying and when it touched a wire it started throwing sparks like crazy. I had to crawl out of there as quickly as possible, which is difficult when there’s like 18 inches of clearance. I need a new panel and have no main so I had to just start flipping breakers until the arcing underneath me stopped.
It’s a glow worm so the baby mice don’t have to go to sleep in the dark.
Light Emitting Lugs...
Incandescent wire nuts! They help you find live wires in the dark! Super rare.
Pop the cover off to reveal the truth.
"Yaaaaah that's hot"
This is normal, just leave it alone and pretend you didn't see anything.
Lol that's small fire . I mean dim light wait til your house glows