#asknostr
In this apartment in Montreal the washer will run all the way through with no problems IF the lights in the apartment are on. If the lights are off, the washer will flip its breaker. The lights & washer are not on the same breaker.
I have built houses & am familiar with residential wiring. I cannot fathom how this is possible. I did not believe it until I saw it repeated consistently many times. Part of me still doesn't fully believe it because it makes no sense to me. But maybe there is something wildly different about commercial wiring?
#electrical #electrician #engineering #wiring #circuits
Replies (9)
Interesting! Also very cool that you've built houses
I had a similar strange issue. My 220 circuit was going bad and when I turned on my oven my lights worked. Our something similar. The oven was regulating the voltage at the demarcation point of the house.
Once the circuit breaker fuse was replaced everything worked normally.
Have you tried cussing at it in Québécoise?
Well clearly your washer is afraid of the dark
Could be they are wired as a branch circuit with a shared neutral 🤔
How old are the breakers? An electrician might look at these first
If the breaker that services the washer is turned off do the lights work?
This was my thought too.
Could be a broken neutral if the apartment is on a dual voltage system. There are 3 wires feeding your panel - 1 neutral and 2 hot. Each hot should be 120v to the neutral and 240v to eachother. If the neutral is broken then the voltage will go crazy under unbalanced load. The more unbalanced the load on the 2 hot legs the worse the voltage will be. The voltage will always equal 240 (say 90v and 150v for example).
Open your panel and take voltage on the 2 hot legs while turning things off and on and trying to make the load unbalanced between them. If your voltage goes weird then you have a broken neutral somewhere source side of there. Don't try to fix it unless you've shut off all load because technically that neutral is the return path.
Commercial high rise apartment building that is brand new.
Yes, lights work as they should
