Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

[keeney123]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

So your saying you only one 120 RMS power line coming into your home?

[budm]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Well, it sounds like you need to get good working meter to start with otherwise you are doing goose chase with the wrong data.
What do you mean you do not have 240VAC yet? I never seen the house that the Electric company does not provide split-phase power to the house.
Amperage of the panel has nothing to do with getting the split-phase power to the house or not.
Show us what you have in your breaker panel.

http://www.generatorsforhomeuse.us/electrical-wiring/

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

I said transformer because the voltage is step down from the usually 120 AC. 17Volt and voltages around that value are typical transformer voltages for like the door bell. Also, I believe some thermostat voltages are around this voltage. Other wise if it is directly connected to the 120 line you would have current flow on that line and some resistance would be eating up the other 103 volts.



When RJARRRPCGP talks about leg he is referring to the different voltages on the main panel. You have two bus bars each is considered a leg. So as one bar is going towards its positive peak voltage the other is going towards it's negative peak voltage. So the difference in RMS Voltage between them is 220V RMS or around that amount. Being that you connect breakers to these bars and they go out to outlets The voltage difference between two outlets that are connected to different bus bars or legs will be 220V RMS

Okay, I think I understand. I didn't think dirt on a wire could make it read low like that. I figured I'd get nothing at all or the full 120. Could the dirt have caused it to read 17VAC or so? Or is there a short somewheres and I need to find it? I've been removing old wires that aren't hooked anywheres. I've been pounding in nails, screwing stuff, using fish tape, etc. I could have somehow made a loose wire taught I guess.

You, BudM and the pirate guy, RJARRRPCGP, seem to know a lot about this AC stuff. Is there a way for me to test at the main breaker what's coming in? Could this house have 127VAC coming in instead of 120VAC? I'm worried about my fancy electronics getting ruined now. Either my meter needs work or this voltage isn't very stable.

Also, I'm pretty certain that sub panel isn't a good thing. The main panel is 100 amp. And then there's a double pole breaker that says 60 AMP feeding the 60 AMP sub panel. The 60 amp sub panel has 8 holes, all populated, with six 20 amp breakers and one double pole 20 amp breaker. So, that means 100 amp coming in and 60 goes to the sub-panel, the main bigger panel only gets 40 amp. Maybe that's causing issues?

It's a two story house with a basement and an attic and our old one story small house (the size of a trailer) had a 200-amp panel. Everything there was electric, but here, even with natural gas stove, water heater, furnace, and dryer being natural gas, that just seems like the panels aren't big enough.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

he's talking about the 2 phases that you combine for that 240v outlet.

Okay. In this house, I don't got any 240V yet. But I'm thinking when I put the new 200-AMP panel, instead of that 12-2 (or was it 10-2?) I'll use 12-3 (or 10-3). I didn't know enough about AC back then and should have went with it to begin with.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

I would turn off all the breakers, the have nothing connected top the outlets, then check the resistance between the bare GND (SAFETY GND) and the white Neutral wires to see if they all show <1 Ohms. You have to make sure the wrings are done correctly without miswiring.
The reading of 126V may be reading through another phase of the LINE through loads so that bare wire may not be at GND. So also try unplug everything from all the outlets to see what you get between Line and SAFETY GND that you are getting 126VAC to see what you have with no load to the electrical system..

So, I tested the outlets again. Today, they're all testing around 127VAC. My multimeter is being a bit odd. I set it to AC, and it shows something like 0.004VAC. Then I move the range over, and it shows 0.040VAC, then I move it over again, and again until I get in the 120VAC range. Then it shows 4.0VAC, and slowly counts down to around 0VAC. It takes a good 30 seconds or so before it gets to around 0VAC. I'm wondering, being as old as it is, if it needs calibration or something. It's a Craftsman from waaay back in the day (in the 1990's or so).

I tested the wire for the hood again. I killed all the juice and striped the wire. I flipped the breakers back on and tested, now the neutral is reading like it should be. I'm thinking the dirt and stickynes that was on it might have affected the reading.

The switch in the upstairs bathroom, by the toilet, I put a light bulb to the switch when it's off, the bulb doesn't light. I put the light bulb to it when the switch is on, the bulb doesn't light. I take my multimeter and measure it...I get around 90VAC. Maybe 86VAC or something.

So far, every outlet I've tested now is reading around 127VAC. I'm thinking it could be something with the meter. Except for that mystery light switch that reads 80~90 VAC.

I'm slowly removing the free hanging wires. There's a bunch in the basement! Most of them don't run anywhere but there's one that looks like someone ran it from behind a wall upstairs, down to the basement and just never hooked it to the panel. It doesn't look like the end has been cut, ever. Not sure what that one is for.

There was old wiring going into a junction box that had a light on it. I went down there, turned off all the breakers, opened the light switch up. The neutral wire broke off. I fixed that. There where these weird metal clamp things that were pinching the ground wires together. I removed that. The old wire, the only thing that it was connected to in the box was the bare metal ground wire. I put it all back together. I thought maybe the broken white wire was related to the hood upstairs. I found what breaker turned off that light, but it doesn't effect the hood.

I still have more wires to remove. Short bits that just don't go anywhere. It's a mess, but it's slowly coming together. There's no 240V in this house. I gotta add that, but to do that, I need to upgrade the box. There's 100AMP main panel and it feeds a 60AMP sub panel. I'm going to upgrade to a 200 AMP but after we get more money.


For the baby's bedroom, before I tie up the subfloor, I'm going to add a wall plate that has ethernet, coax and telephone. I'm going to run it into the basement and eventually, get one of those boxes by the electrical panel. One that has the cable modem, has a patch panel for ethernet, all the phone stuff, all the cable stuff, the spliters, etc. I'll do one room at a time. Baby's room first. I think for her room, I'll add two of those wall plates. One on opposites sides of the room. I should have done it before I laid down most of the plywood. I only got a 4" wide strip left to put down. But I think I can fish it through to the other side of the room.

[keeney123]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Keeney123,

We have no way of knowing where this wire goes. It appears to run up into the wall. I don't have a way to trace it yet.

I don't think there's a transformer anywhere on it. It wouldn't really make sense for there to be one. It used to power one of those hooded vents. If I knew what breaker it went too, I'd be able to follow the wire and see if it goes to a junction box or not.

I'm probably going to have to have my wife either go down in the basement and start flipping breakers or hold the multimeter and check for the voltage from the hot and ground and see when it goes off. I don't think we need to worry about any of the natural gas appliances now.



The furnace and hot water tank have these auto-shutoffs. If voltage is removed, the gas valve shuts close. There's no pilots for us to light. When power is restored, they automatically open back up. We don't have to do anything at all.

The said with the old furnace, if we lost electricity, the gas would continue to flow. If we lost electricity, we'd have to manually kill the gas to the old furnace. They said there was no safety shut-off like there is with the new ones. I'm glad we got that replaced!

I said transformer because the voltage is step down from the usually 120 AC. 17Volt and voltages around that value are typical transformer voltages for like the door bell. Also, I believe some thermostat voltages are around this voltage. Other wise if it is directly connected to the 120 line you would have current flow on that line and some resistance would be eating up the other 103 volts.



When RJARRRPCGP talks about leg he is referring to the different voltages on the main panel. You have two bus bars each is considered a leg. So as one bar is going towards its positive peak voltage the other is going towards it's negative peak voltage. So the difference in RMS Voltage between them is 220V RMS or around that amount. Being that you connect breakers to these bars and they go out to outlets The voltage difference between two outlets that are connected to different bus bars or legs will be 220V RMS

[stj]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

he's talking about the 2 phases that you combine for that 240v outlet.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Probably not a bad neutral, unless you see another leg dipping insanely, such as dipping to 113 V.

For example, one leg was 127 V and the other leg was only 114 V...

What do you mean by leg? Is that just another word for wire?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Something fishy there. Any pictures of what what have? If copper bare wire is connected to white in junction box you will read 120 volt from black to gnd and 120 volts from black to white. Where are you reading 126 volt? Is that on the transformer? What happens to the voltage when you disconnect the 126 volt line.?

Keeney123,

We have no way of knowing where this wire goes. It appears to run up into the wall. I don't have a way to trace it yet.

I don't think there's a transformer anywhere on it. It wouldn't really make sense for there to be one. It used to power one of those hooded vents. If I knew what breaker it went too, I'd be able to follow the wire and see if it goes to a junction box or not.

I'm probably going to have to have my wife either go down in the basement and start flipping breakers or hold the multimeter and check for the voltage from the hot and ground and see when it goes off. I don't think we need to worry about any of the natural gas appliances now.

The furnace and hot water tank have these auto-shutoffs. If voltage is removed, the gas valve shuts close. There's no pilots for us to light. When power is restored, they automatically open back up. We don't have to do anything at all.

The said with the old furnace, if we lost electricity, the gas would continue to flow. If we lost electricity, we'd have to manually kill the gas to the old furnace. They said there was no safety shut-off like there is with the new ones. I'm glad we got that replaced!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Something fishy there. Any pictures of what what have? If copper bare wire is connected to white in junction box you will read 120 volt from black to gnd and 120 volts from black to white. Where are you reading 126 volt? Is that on the transformer? What happens to the voltage when you disconnect the 126 volt line.?

Probably not a bad neutral, unless you see another leg dipping insanely, such as dipping to 113 V.

For example, one leg was 127 V and the other leg was only 114 V...

[budm]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

I would turn off all the breakers, the have nothing connected top the outlets, then check the resistance between the bare GND (SAFETY GND) and the white Neutral wires to see if they all show <1 Ohms. You have to make sure the wrings are done correctly without miswiring.
The reading of 126V may be reading through another phase of the LINE through loads so that bare wire may not be at GND. So also try unplug everything from all the outlets to see what you get between Line and SAFETY GND that you are getting 126VAC to see what you have with no load to the electrical system..

[keeney123]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

<GASP> Black and the bare copper wire are reading 126VAC!!! Black and the white wire are reading 17VAC. White and the copper are reading nothing.

So, it seems like the bare copper one, that's what I call the ground wire, is hooked up, the black wire, that's what I call the hot wire, is hooked up, and the white wire, that's what I call the neutral, is not hooked up. Is this normal? Seems like there's maybe a break in the neutral line somewheres or something...

Something fishy there. Any pictures of what what have? If copper bare wire is connected to white in junction box you will read 120 volt from black to gnd and 120 volts from black to white. Where are you reading 126 volt? Is that on the transformer? What happens to the voltage when you disconnect the 126 volt line.?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

And why 126VAC? The rest of the house outlets read a steady 120VAC...I almost grabbed the hot wire (the black one). That would have hurt, wouldn't it?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

<GASP> Black and the bare copper wire are reading 126VAC!!! Black and the white wire are reading 17VAC. White and the copper are reading nothing.

So, it seems like the bare copper one, that's what I call the ground wire, is hooked up, the black wire, that's what I call the hot wire, is hooked up, and the white wire, that's what I call the neutral, is not hooked up. Is this normal? Seems like there's maybe a break in the neutral line somewheres or something...

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Budm, what about the 17VAC wire? I'm thinking something is back feeding into it or something. Is that possible? I can't really see why it has 17VAC on it. I'll measure again with my meter. It was early in the morning. Maybe I had it set to DC or something stupid like that.

...What you are doing is inducing a frequency voltage and the pick up is magnetically tune for that frequency. Should not matter what wire you use it on. telephone etc.

Can you go a bit more in depth with this? What's the pick up? We'll check the doorbell idea. I know there were a few transformers down in the basement. One is for the doorbell. The other one I think was on the old hot water tank and I think there was even one on the old furnace. Now, just the doorbell I believe.

So, the doorbell one, it's on the outside of an electrical metal junction box. Is it just magnetically stuck there or is it actually somehow wired up through that cover? I tried pulling it off, thinking it was stuck, but the cover started opening up, so I left it. I was interested in knowing how the doorbell thing worked....

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

17vac could be capacitivly coupled from another cable running parallel with it.

i have seen hundreds of volts with enough energy to create sparks capacitivly coupled into the earth wires before, when the earth wire became disconnected at the meter from the main outside line.

This brings me to a question. The old gas lines, there were bonding clamps and bonding wires that connected to the water pipes. The new gas lines don't have any bonding clamps. When I asked the young gentlemen who installed the gas lines, they didn't know what bonding was. I showed them the water pipe and the cable splitter and how they shared a common ground. They said it didn't matter, even the flex pipe was designed not to blow out. I don't think they understood the purpose behind it.

Our neighbor, he's some sort of manager at that company and knows a lot more about this stuff. He said it should be bonded outside, at the meter. I told him the meter was in the basement and he thought the bonding would be outside, buried.

He knew what bonding was and said normally they run a bonding wire directly to the box. I thought maybe I could just run a bonding wire directly from the line by the gas meter over to the water line. That's where the cable splitter bonding wire runs. It'd be cheaper.

Is that something I should do or should I just assume he's correct and it's safely bonded outside the house under the ground? It wouldn't hurt nothing buying two bonding clamps and just running the foot or so from the gas line to the water line, would it?

[keeney123]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

Budm, what about the 17VAC wire? I'm thinking something is back feeding into it or something. Is that possible? I can't really see why it has 17VAC on it. I'll measure again with my meter. It was early in the morning. Maybe I had it set to DC or something stupid like that.

So it sound like your seeing the output of a step down transformer. Like for a door bell. It maybe when they were working on the house the wire was broken to the door bell. You could also see if it is connected by having a person push the door bell and see if the voltage disappears. To trace it you can do as BudM has said. Turn off the power etc. What you are doing is inducing a frequency voltage and the pick up is magnetically tune for that frequency. Should not matter what wire you use it on. telephone etc.

[stj]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

17vac could be capacitivly coupled from another cable running parallel with it.

i have seen hundreds of volts with enough energy to create sparks capacitivly coupled into the earth wires before, when the earth wire became disconnected at the meter from the main outside line.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

They do: Notes: no power to the wire you are tracing. turn off the breaker when tracing the wire, if there are loads conncted to the outlets that will fool the tracing. You have to play with the tools to see what it can do and cannot do, setup some wiring to simulate the problem..
https://www.amazon.com/Extech-TG20-W.../dp/B00APD16D2

http://www.techtoolsupply.com/Produc...FQpofgodKJIAcA

https://jet.com/product/detail/e4b68...wE9A&gclsrc=ds

Budm, what about the 17VAC wire? I'm thinking something is back feeding into it or something. Is that possible? I can't really see why it has 17VAC on it. I'll measure again with my meter. It was early in the morning. Maybe I had it set to DC or something stupid like that.

I guess I can just flip breakers until the 17VAC goes down to 0VAC.


That last one you linked to, the one at Jet.com for 94$, that looks nice. It almost looks like it can do coax cable as well as the RJ11 / RJ45 and the electrical wires. I bet that'd come in real handy. It doesn't show how far it can detect to though. The one I linked to, that says up to 1000 feet in length. Do you have any experience with any of these? Is it worth the 94$ for the fancy one? We use a cable modem for telephone but this has phone wires throughout the house. They're a mess. I'd love to fix them and wire them up properly, so if we ever sell, everyone's all set if they wanted to switch to another phone company like verizon or something.

[budm]

Re: Are LED light bulbs supposed to get hot?

They do: Notes: no power to the wire you are tracing. turn off the breaker when tracing the wire, if there are loads conncted to the outlets that will fool the tracing. You have to play with the tools to see what it can do and cannot do, setup some wiring to simulate the problem..
https://www.amazon.com/Extech-TG20-W.../dp/B00APD16D2

http://www.techtoolsupply.com/Produc...FQpofgodKJIAcA

https://jet.com/product/detail/e4b68...wE9A&gclsrc=ds