Do It Yourself

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Electrically savvy folks, does the bottom wire look corroded to you? (infosec.pub)

submitted 5 days ago by reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net to c/diy@beehaw.org

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I’m in an apt. and the power has been shutting off lately. It doesn’t trip any of the breakers in the breaker box inside the apt. but it does trip the master breaker on the box outside. Thought it was an oven issue but it still happens with the oven breaker off.

Visual inspection of the breaker box outside shows one of the wires looks a bit corroded. Wires to/from the rest of the units are a nice copper color. Is that a red flag?

Landlord is dragging their feet and telling us to talk to the electric company, and electric company is saying to call a licensed electrician, so I’m just trying to understand the issue so hopefully the landlord will listen to me.

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[–] endlessvoid@lemmy.today 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Electrical Engineer here, that corrosion doesn't look too bad, I wouldn't assume it's the issue but it's not impossible it might be a contributing factor since corrosion on connections can cause heat and heat can trip breakers.

If the breaker trips are happening when you do something like turn on the oven or the toaster then it's just a matter of the electric service to the house being too small for the apartments loads. This can happen if the apartment originally had gas appliances that were later switched to electric or something else (like a hot tub) was later added to increase the electric load beyond what was originally designed for.

If the trips dont seem to correspond to anything you're doing with electric appliances, then the equipment may be going bad or there may be an intermittent short. Both of which are not something you would be able to troubleshoot (and frankly, if you don't know what you're doing, even opening up a panelboard like you've done can be deadly).

Either way I highly recommend you either pressure your landlord to bring in an electrician, or pay for one out of pocket if thats not an option.

[–] reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago

I definitely won’t make a go of it myself, don’t worry! They also recently moved the sub-panel from inside a closet to a more accessible wall to bring the building up to fire code or something so I wonder if something could be loose from that process. I’ve lived here several years and didn’t even know the unit had a main breaker outside until this year when someone from the electrical company showed me how to reset it.