Marty,

Does anything else in the house cause the same problem? (like a vacuum cleaner, for instance, or your tablesaw or garbage disposal)

Also, do you happen to know if the pellet stove and the dining room lights are on the same bus at the panel or on the opposite bus?  (Can you give us the circuit numbers at the panelboard for both the pellet stove and the dining room lights?)

What other lights are on the dining room light circuit?  Are they affected?   

My suspicion is that it is somehow related to a poor neutral connection somewhere.

Gregg,

Combined neutral is highly unlikely when one circuit is old and the other is new.

They are on the same bus bar. Not sure if I have enough wire to switch to opposite bus bar(s). Any further suggestions? i believe both circuits are 15 amps. would upping the circuit amp(s) to 30 remedy the problem?

Marty

Marty, not knowing the size of your panel and how it is loaded makes figuring this out a bit difficult. Upping the circuit to 30 amp is not going to fix your problem. From what you have described so far I’m thinking that the panel may have reached its max load. Bompa asked if anything else in the house causes the same problem. We need to know if you experience the lights diming or flickering in any of the other rooms when the fan kicks on or when you run a portable appliance such as a vacuum. Please let us know so that we can help you with this problem.
Leeanne

It has not been asked; is the dining room on a dimmer?

I have noticed that many times a circuit with a dimmer will sort-of flicker when a load is applied to another circuit on the same side of the 240 but a different breaker.

Like Leeanne and Bompa said, does it do it sometimes with a vacuum cleaner plugged into a circuit not on the dining room circuit?

Try the kitchen circuits, they are normally only for receptacles and normally there are at least two in the kitchen. Odds are in your favor that one of them will be on the same side of the 240 but of course a different breaker than the dining room.

Do the lights "flicker" when a toaster or microwave is turned on?
( make sure there's something in the microwave! )

 

Could the fan on the pellet stove be at fault? Drawing too much power to overcome the inertia of being stopped?

Marty,

Based on your response I have to believe you think the left side of the panel is on one bus bar and the right side on the other.  That is not at all the case.  The bus bar assignments alternate with every breaker on each side.  (That is why I asked for the circuit numbers.)  To explain further by example --- Say, for example, that your new circuit for the pellet stove was on breaker #24, which is the 12th pole down on the right side of the panel.  #26, the next one down, would be on a different bus, but #28 would be back to the same bus as 24.  (Also #23, on the left side, is on the same bus as 24.) 

But, I didn't ask the question to get you to try a different bus.  (at least not yet) 

And, please don't even consider increasing the size of that circuit breaker.  That just makes the installation 'illegal' and unsafe.

Leeanne reinforced the key questions to help determine which way the voltage will shift on start-up if you happen to have a bad neutral connection.  The answers and circuits numbers involved may help her, or me, analyze what is happening and where it is happening. 

In a future we may want to explore how balanced your panelboard may be.  Just out of curiousity, do you happen to have a friend who has a clamp-on ammeter? 

EDIT  ---  Gerry asked a very good question that hadn't occurred to me.  Please answer that one also.  Please don't be stingy with info.  (Leeanne's was the last post when I started this one.) 

Dining room is circuit #3 (15 amp). Pellet stove is circuit # (17 20 amp). The panel itself still has 5 slots availble for future breakers. The service was updated to 200 amps several years ago. I do not expierence this problem at any other time, just when the pellet stove blower/fan cycles. Their is no dimmer in the dining room, or anywhere in the house for that matter?

Marty.

Marty,

They are on opposite busses. (assuming your panel is numbered correctly - I've seen lots that aren't especially on military bases.)  3, 7, 11, 15 & 19 will all be on the same bus.

I was much more expecting same bus rather than opposite bus.  The tendency is to reduce the voltage on one bus and increase on the other when a motor starting load is added if there is a poor neutral connection affecting the entire service.  So I am thinking that is not the problem.

What kind of lamps in the dining room?  (incandescent?  halogen?  fluorescent?  compact fluorescent?  LED?  other?)

Can you feel a vibration or physical jolt when the pellet stove starts or stops? 

Bompa, just a thought, distance to transformer?

Does the transformer have a good ground? ( That would give the same symptom as a poor ground in the house. )

Are all the connections for neutral good in both the meter base and the panel box?
( I had one once where one of the hots was not tightened properly, I'm thinking a loose neutral would act much the same as a poor ground. )

Would it be a good idea to contact the electric company to check neutrals and other connections in the meter base as well as the transformer ground?

Just a thought.
Is the fan motor a capacitor run?
If so it could have a bad capacitor.

probably a dumb question.but did make solid connections or is their a stab&jab connection involved here?

Hi Martym

Hopefully it might be more simple than the previous comments indicate?

My bathroom is on two separate 15A dedicated lighting circuits, the outlets are on two dedicated 20A circuits, one of these circuits also powers the exhaust fan, and the auxiliary bathroom heater is on it's own dedicated 20A circuit.

Master bedroom is likewise, two separate 20A branches on separate legs for the outlets in there.

When we turn on the bathroom heater, about every third or fourth time, the west outlets in the bedroom would flicker enough to louse up the alarm clocks, and then after several times of this they went dead.
And what made it even hard to find to fix, was no breaker was tripped, however, turning the breaker off and back on would restore the power, for the time being that is. I even replaced the breaker thinking it was a bad breaker.

We finally found it, one wire slipped just enough as a wire nut was being installed, that the vibration from the heater fan, or if you tried plugging something into a bedroom outlet that drew high amps, the circuit would open.
The box the power to heater comes from is on the same wall stud as the outlet box in the other room and I guess just enough vibration on that stud caused the poor connection to loosen up.

Had something similar in an apartment I lived in when I was much younger. Every time the kids would shake their crib enough for it to thump against a wall, our hall and living room lights would go out. Only in this case, they used the stab-lox on the outlet and under-stripped the wire plugged into it. I just moved the wires to the screw terminals and the problem was solved!

Good Luck on figuring out what the heck is causing yours!

I have a side comment about breaker boxes, might be showing my age here too, hi hi......
In some boxes, the breaker itself determines which leg of the bus it grabs, depending upon whether it's a long reach or short reach breaker. On other boxes, all the breakers have the same reach and it's just which side of the box it's placed, except for the 220 breakers. Like Gerry's experiences, you wouldn't believe some of the panel boxes I've seen over the years! He's posted a few antiques that were real doozies. And since I did a lot of work in old historical homes, and inner city older homes than historic, hi hi, I've seen everything from common HOT to fused neutrals, switched neutrals were common in some knob n tube installations, and some where both Hot and Neutral were fused, the panel boxes designed that way!

Happy New Year all!

TTUL
Gary

You guys lost me here. Circuit breaker #3 & #17 are both on the left side (if your facing the panel). They both have a single Black wire going to seperate circuit breakers, and each has a White & Green that are attached to the same vertical bar. Does the distance between the respective Green & White wires make a diffrence? Gerry mentioned a bad transformer (everything else in the house works fine). Hrhlm mentioned a bad capacitor, the stove is brand new, and works perfectly. The connections are all screw type, no "jab" connections. Boompa explain why you say they are on diffrent busses? Please.

Marty

Posted By martym on 12-28-2011 03:14 PM
You guys lost me here. Circuit breaker #3 & #17 are both on the left side (if your facing the panel). They both have a single Black wire going to seperate circuit breakers, and each has a White & Green that are attached to the same vertical bar. Does the distance between the respective Green & White wires make a diffrence? Gerry mentioned a bad transformer (everything else in the house works fine). Hrhlm mentioned a bad capacitor, the stove is brand new, and works perfectly. The connections are all screw type, no "jab" connections. Boompa explain why you say they are on diffrent busses? Please.

Marty

Marty, I already did.

Please go back and read my last two posts.  On the left side of the panel circuits 3, 7, 11, 15 & 19 ... will all be on the same bus.  Circuits 1, 5, 9, 13, 17... are on the other.  Think about it.  A double pole breaker would not give you a 240 volt circuit if both poles were connected to the same bus. 

Boompa, forgive me, I'm an idiot. What about the breakers numbered 2,4,6,8,10,12,1,4,16, What bus are they on??

Marty

Marty, don't feel alone, they have me baffled too.

Marty,

Please, it is Bompa, not Boompa. The "O" sound like the O in Bob (actually an "aw" sound), not the OO in boom. My first grandchild heard people calling me "Bob" and "Grandpa" which was confusing so he coined the word "Bompa" by combining the start of one and the end of the other. It stuck and all the other six grandkids use it.

1 & 2 are on the same bus sometimes called bus "A", as are 5 & 6, 9 & 10, 13 & 14, 17 & 18, ...
On bus "B" you find 3 & 4, 7 & 8, 11 & 12, 15 & 16, 19 & 20, ...
Even numbers are on the right, odd on the left. Breakers opposite one another are on the same bus. In the past there have been other types of panel construction but this arrangement is pretty standard. On three phase panels every third breaker position down one side are on the same bus. That way a three pole breaker can go on any three successive pole positions.

EDIT  ---  Tried to find a photo with busses exposed.  Not easy to find.  This will have to do.

Below is a twelve pole panel.  Starting from the bottom you can see the blades that connect to breakers 11 & 12 coming in from the bus down the right side.  Just above that are the blades that connect to breakers 9 & 10 coming in from the other bus.  The breaker at the lower left (breaker position 5) is connected to the same bus as 9 & 10.  Breaker #6 is not installed so you can see half of the blade that 5 & 6 connect to.  Confusing the picture is the two "twin' breakers in position 2.  They are both connected to the same blade and are at the same voltage.  That is NOT a two-pole breaker.


EDIT #2  ---  Despite what I wrote above about "A" & "B", I don't like designating busses that way in a single phase panel.  "A", "B" and "C" are the proper designation for the phases in a three-phase panel.  To use that type of designation in a single phase panel just causes confusion.  (I wrote this edit so those electricians out there reading this don't get mad at me.)