Dirty/bad power - possible?

[iceman (Mike)]

I'm no electrician, so I'm hoping someone can help..

Over the last few years, we've had a horrible run of electrical appliances dying.

- TV
- DVD player (or two)
- Stereo (twice)
- Computer
- Dishwasher (just recently - trips the power safety switch when we try and turn it on)
- One element on stove top (recently, maybe not related. other 3 elements are fine)
- Iron (just today - trips the power safety switch when we try and turn it on)

Is it possible there's something wrong with the power coming into our house that's causing these electrical appliances to fry?
Or is it just bad luck/bad coincidence?

Is it something an electrician could check for?

Thanks

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Mike if you have at any time suffered a lightning strike on nearby power lines that have fried appliances at your home, your safety switch may be damaged.
In your position yes I would have an electrician come and check the safety switch and the quality of the earthing.

As for appliances that trip the safety switch, I wouldn't try using them again until checked and known to be safe.

[Kal (Andrew)]

It is quite easy to trip the switches if you are using anything that consumes more than 1000W electricity like the iron/heater/clothesdryer/kettle/microwave at the same time. You might have a 10A switch which will only allow a max of 2400W through it before tripping it.

As for whether this is behind the broken appliances, I'm not sure. We are fortunate to have alot of cheap equipment from China in the last few years, but the componentry certainly isn't built to last like the 'old days'

I should also mention that NSW electricity supply is alot better than in some other parts of the country. My parents in Brisbane always suffer from brownouts caused by a shortage of power supply.

[erick (Eric)]

Mike, spilling water over an iron while filling it (overflow?) can lead to it tripping a safety switch until it dries out.

Don't know about the rest of the problems, but it sounds like a bigger problem than bad luck or coincidence.

Of course, always advisable to have your TV/stereo/DVD player/computer on a powerboard with some degree of surge protection - you can get them for below $40 for 6 or so outlets now. A few more dollars and you can get one that passes your phone line through some filtration( or surge protection?) as well.

[Ian Robinson]

Try installing a surge buster , you are probably getting lots of spikes and small surges in the AC and these are damaging sensitive ICs in the above appliances.

Brown outs don't help either as the powerfactor takes a few seconds to settle down , meaning too much inductive or capacitive component in the 3 phase AC , this is unhealthy for sensitive ICs too.

We have surge busters on the TV, HiFi , the computers , but not on the washing machine, freezer, fridges, oven and regularly have IC problems with the washing machine.
The fridges and freezer have been fine, but the oven goes ga ga regularly , have to reset the mains power to fix it.

[I.C.D (Ian)]

Originally Posted by iceman

I'm no electrician, so I'm hoping someone can help..

Over the last few years, we've had a horrible run of electrical appliances dying.

- TV
- DVD player (or two)
- Stereo (twice)
- Computer
- Dishwasher (just recently - trips the power safety switch when we try and turn it on)
- One element on stove top (recently, maybe not related. other 3 elements are fine)
- Iron (just today - trips the power safety switch when we try and turn it on)

Is it possible there's something wrong with the power coming into our house that's causing these electrical appliances to fry?
Or is it just bad luck/bad coincidence?

Is it something an electrician could check for?

Thanks

How close are you to the pole mounted sustationif it is outside your house , it is not uncommom for the electrical mobs to bump up the low voltage from 415 v to 420 or 425 v per phase so they will have 415 v at the end of the line ,if their is a spike or surge the voltage close to the traney may execced 430+v which may cause some of you gear to fry. You can ask them to place a recorder on your incoming supply and record the high and low over a couple of days

[AdrianF (Adrian)]

A couple of years ago while I was living in the Rockhampton area we had a couple of new appliances go in quick succession, microwave and my brand new PC. When the techs looked at the appliances for insurance purposes he claimed that we had had a brown out causing the damage, insurance paid for new PC. For a couple of weeks our TV would turn itself off occasionally and our lights would dim and then come back bright. We made a complaint to Ergon about the power fluctuations and they fitted a power sampler to the house and monitored at 5min intervals the voltage to our house, after a week they came and told us no problems where seen. Now in the meantime I bought a UPS (Opti-UPS 525bt) and was using that on the PC, now this UPS as the provision to monitor, via a cable and software, the voltage and it was all over the place from just below 200V to over 250V with a sample rate of 1 sec intervals for a week (I believe the guarantee is +/- 10%) so the voltage was going down below the threshold. I bought an old 486 PC to run some Ham radio software and during one of these brownouts the 486 PC died making it the second PC in about 3 months to die, no great loss I got it at a garage sale for $50 including 15" monitor. I made another complaint which was ignored totally obviously I am a troublemaker.
About a week later I was working at the uni and my wife SMSed me telling me that the lights, microwave the interior light on the fridge was flashing on and off I told her to turn everything off and on the way home I went into Ergon to let them know there was a problem again to be told yes they already know and a team had been dispatch to look into it.
Before my wife could turn everything off the fridge let out the magic blue/green smoke.
When I got home the Ergon team where up the powerpole in front of my place, one of the neighbors had notice flashing on the insulator. Sure enough the power line had been burning itself out from the inside of the cable somehow. I went to Ergon and spoke to the claims/complaints people and about a week later I had a visit from the area manager(?) with a promise to pay for the damage caused to my appliances. A new fridge and a new PC the $50 PC became a $1500 PC.

Adrian

[rogerg (Roger)]

Mike,

Perhaps checking with neighbours/people in the area if they have had similar problems would help identify if the problem is specific to your house.

Here in WA if the problem is caused by some types of surges originating from outside your property you can claim the damaged goods from the power company. I'm not sure on the specific/limitations, but my neighbour who works for Western Power once told me I should've just claimed my $1400 of telescope repair costs to Western Power, because the source of the problem could be proved to the power input. He's done the same for his TV and other items in the past.

Also related, my brother's house has higher than usual voltage. He's had to install higher than normal voltage globes (250 or 270, can't remember) so they wouldn't continually blow after a short period of use. That was the electrician's solution to the problem. He hasn't had problems with appliances etc, only lighting.

Roger.

[Phil]

Being a sparky the only real thing to do is get a mega and check your earthing first. Then i would disconnect everything and disconnect the neutrals and mega each circuit to see what the reading are. Also you can make sure all the connection in the box are tight. If everything turn out ok includeing the voltage caming into the house go around and plug things back in till the circuit trips. If something trips the circuit put the mega on that to see what the readings are. If you no how to use a mega dont mega anything with electroics in it yo will fry it. There also could be a lose connection on the pole coming into your house or in the area.
Sorry i can not come around to help you.
Phil

[Kevnool (Kev)]

I,m no electrician but just talk to your supplier about brown outs and if there occuring its when lower than 240v comes through the line .....cheers Kev.

[kinetic (Steve)]

Hi Mike,

Originally Posted by iceman

- TV
- DVD player (or two)
- Stereo (twice)
- Computer
- Dishwasher (just recently - trips the power safety switch when we try and turn it on)
- One element on stove top (recently, maybe not related. other 3 elements are fine)
- Iron (just today - trips the power safety switch when we try and turn it on)

Is it possible there's something wrong with the power coming into our house that's causing these electrical appliances to fry?
Or is it just bad luck/bad coincidence?

Is it something an electrician could check for?

At first glance your list seems to be a typical list for our household
fried list, but what exactly do you mean by dead?

Is the TV totally dead or does the tube fire up/ sound not work etc?
Similarly, are the other appliances dead or just something buggered
in them like won't load DVDs anymore etc.
Stove elements do burn out, I have replaced my brother's stove
element like clockwork about every 2 years.

But to put yourself at ease I think it might be worth getting the
quality of your power checked.
You can request the supplier fit a logger to your area which checks the
voltage over 24 hours if you suspect a bad supply.
The supplier has an obligation to feed you 240v within 5%.

Once in our street we had a brownout situation where the power came back on after a blackout to only 150v.
The only way we knew was the fridge was making a horrible chug a chug noise and the incandescent lights were half brightness.
Fluoros had not come back on (they need full 240v).
I ran and got my multimeter and videotaped the reading and turned on
the date and time.
I ran next door and told the bloke to turn off his frige, computer etc,
If we had left the appliances like that they would have burnt out.

The video evidence was used for a neighbour the other side to prove
his microwave burnt out.
The supplier tried to weasel out of the claim until I said, hey I'm an
Electrician and I videotaped it buddy

regards,
Steve B.

[acropolite (Phil)]

Mike, I'd say you've had a worse than average run, unless you have been buying brands that are prone to failure. I've always bought Yamaha Hi-Fi & home theatre equipment, Panasonic or Sharp TV's; in 20+ years just one failure as a result of a nearby lightning strike, cost under $100 to repair. No TV, or any other electrical problems during the same period. Power spikes are not as bad as brownouts, low voltage will cause damage more frequently than voltage spikes and during power outages devices with onboard software are prone to being scrambled if the power doesn't come back on cleanly. Most of the problems with the phone systems I work on are caused by power fluctuations.

[Mark]

A million years ago I used to work for the local supply authority and I occasionally used to investigate situations like yours. As I.C.D. mentions, quite often the 415 at the tx was actually 425+ to allow for voltage drop at the end of the line. We used to recommend 250V rated light globes to limit frequent changes.

Also as Phil points out a loose connection can cause all kinds of dramas. A loose neutral connection can cause all kinds of bizarre things to happen in an MEN system. If you had appliances smoking that seemed to be all connected to the one circuit, I'd bet a baked dinner you had a loose neutral.

It would be worth getting your switchboard checked and your point-of attachment, as well as querying the supply voltage via the local supply authority (or their agent). That used to be a free service, but who knows these days.

Mark

[tornado33]

In a street in Newcastle a frew years ago it seems there was some sort of power harmonic, as one poor resident had just about everything blow, even lights. The harmonic generated huge surges. Only his house was affected. He had to battle the authorities for years to get something done, in the end I think they had to re do the grid near his house.

At my place we get higher voltage than normal as we are right opposite a powerpole transformer. Voltage here ranges from 240 up to 250v. However we dont get unusually high appliance fail rates. My 5 year old PC is still going fine as a 2nd pc in the garage.
Scott