Electrical Problems

[Rocketmaniac]

I have a story to tell you about how my Saturday went........ My wife and I got a good bit of money for christmas this year...... We decided to buy a new stove......... We ordered a real nice stove from Sears last week ($900)........ It came in yesterday and I drove and picked it up in my truck.......... We made plans to have a small party to celebrate the new stove and invited a 10-12 people over for dinner........ One of the friends is a certified electrician...... He and I installed the new cable (4 wire) and put it in it's place and turned it on.......

My wife turned on the oven and the circuit breaker popped........ No problem, just re-set right? Wrong....... I re-set the breaker (dual 40 amp breakers) and as soon as I did....... I heard a buzzing sound from the other room and the breaker popped again....... Then the smell of burnt wires came from the panel box.......

After re-checking the wiring, we tried again........ Nothing....... Well, actuall another breaker (15 amp, right next to the 40amp) popped also........ We re-set that one and tried again....... Same thing...... We gave up and called Sears....... After talking to several people, we got the store manager....... A new one was ordered and they agree to deliever it........ It will be here Jan 8th........

So we took the dinner to be cooked over to my sister-in-laws house and started eating the snacks and finger foods we had layed out....... But the smell of burnt wires still had me worried...... The smell in the room with the breaker box was going away, but...... There was still a bad smell..... I followed it and found it was coming from my rocket / computer room........ I quickly found that my UPS was ALL BLACK!!!!! and had a melted case!!!!!! I also lost a surg strip.......

I called Sears back and after several people, a few return calls....... Sears has turned this "claim" over to the insurance company....... I have to call them Monday morning to see how things are going to proceed.......

My main concern is the amount of burnt wire smell that came out from behind the panel box..... I am worried that those wire are was really damaged..... We live in a double-wide, which can burn to the ground very easily............

The end of my "what did you do on saturday" story

 

[rbeckey]

Electricity is my "spider." I can wire switches and recepticles, know when to use GFCI, and how to splice, but I hate it. I would replace the wiring in the circuits affected, at Sears' expense of course.

 

[bobkrech]

Randy

My first thought is that the new wiring is inadequate for the stove. Almost all stoves require a 50 amp circuit breaker and minimum of 8 (6 is better) gauge wiring, or that the main feed wiring may not be adequate to carry the combined current load. Even so a properly installed 40 amp breaker should interrupt the circuit without damaging the wires.

It doesn't seem that the wiring and breakers were installed properly. You may want to check to see that L1 and L2 connections are teh ones that were breakered. It is possible that either a neutral and/or a ground wire were interchanged with one of the power lines. This could cause an instant short when you turn on the stove. It would then take 80 amps through the one breakered leg to trip the breaker. This will also fry the house wiring.

Don't wait to do a complete wiring check for the whole house.

Good luck.

Bob Krech

 

[n3tjm]

Was the new stove connected to the same circut that the old stove was connected to? If that is the case... unless the new stove needs more power... you shouldn't have a problem with the wiring... so this suggests to me that there is something wrong with the stove... which obviously you and Sears agree with. Somewhere in that stove there is a short...

 

[Rocketmaniac]

Originally posted by bobkrech
My first thought is that the new wiring is inadequate for the stove. Almost all stoves require a 50 amp circuit breaker and minimum of 8 (6 is better) gauge wiring, or that the main feed wiring may not be adequate to carry the combined current load. Even so a properly installed 40 amp breaker should interrupt the circuit without damaging the wires.

Yes, this might be true...... But, if the new stove required that much more power, I would have thought there would be a BIG warning...... Maybe not.....

Originally posted by bobkrech
It doesn't seem that the wiring and breakers were installed properly. You may want to check to see that L1 and L2 connections are teh ones that were breakered. It is possible that either a neutral and/or a ground wire were interchanged with one of the power lines. This could cause an instant short when you turn on the stove. It would then take 80 amps through the one breakered leg to trip the breaker. This will also fry the house wiring.

L1 and L2..... what is this? The dual circuit breakers? Only one of the two did trip...... Nothing was changed except the addition of the new cable to the new stove....... The new cable was a pretty heavy 4 wire cable..... My understanding is that there were two power, one ground and one neutral..... I had a certified electrician so I feel comfortable that the new cable was installed right.......

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[Rocketmaniac]

Originally posted by n3tjm
Was the new stove connected to the same circut that the old stove was connected to? If that is the case... unless the new stove needs more power... you shouldn't have a problem with the wiring... so this suggests to me that there is something wrong with the stove... which obviously you and Sears agree with. Somewhere in that stove there is a short...

Doug, it was the same wiring up to the outlet...... only new cable and new stove......

 

[bobkrech]

Randy

All Sears stoves that I am aware of use 240 VAC, and I checked out several electric stoves on the Sears website and they looked like they need a 50 amp circuit.

This 240 VAC is obtained by sending the basic 3 phase high voltage on the street through a wye-to-delta transformer and is typically used to feed 3 homes. The delta tranformer feed to the home consists of 3 wires, 1 120 volt lines 180 degrees out of phase (L1 and L2) and a neutral return line. The neutral return line is grounded at the main power box to obtain the house ground.

In your power panel you can plug in a single breaker into any location to get 120 VAC. To get 240 VAC you need a ganged double breaker into any 2 adjecent location because the slot alternate L1, L2, L1, L2, etc. and each 120 VAC line is hot.

So in your 4 wire plug, L1 and L2 should be feed through a ganged dual breaker, and the neutral and grounds should not be.

The stove might well be defective however the breakers should have tripped way before any damage occurs if the wiring is done properly. Since you had all kinds of damage elsewhere I suspect a wiring error in additon to the stove problem. If the wires got switched and on of the power lines was not breakered, or if the ground and the neutral lines were reversed, you could draw excesive current and damage the house wiring.

Bob Krech