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Old October 22nd 04, 05:06 AM
Howard
 
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On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:13:52 -0400, BDK
wrote:

In article . net,
says...
Can anyone suggest a remedy for noisy house wiring? When I throw the
breakers and use my portable the buzz is gone. As soon as I flip a breaker
again, doesn't matter which one, it's back again. Ayone else had this
problem?

-Brian





Turn off the power and check all the screws that clamp the wires and
I'll bet you find at least one cooked or loose.

I had this horrible noise that turned out to be coming from the aluminum
wire from the breaker panel to the A/C unit. There was a sump heater
that was on all the time, so anytime that circuit was hot, it sounded
like an arc welder that was having problems. I could hear it from 0-30
MHZ, and even up to 460 MHZ from my scanner.


It started suddenly one day, and got rapidly worse. When I turned off
the power and touched the wires, one was really hot, and the clamp in
the breaker box was all black and the paint on the inside of the cover
was all dark looking, having been "cooked".

We called an electrician friend and he and I changed out the wires in
about an hour with copper. This solved the noise problem,and the AC
worked better than it had in a long time. He was able to temporarily
get everything hooked up until he came back and put in a new breaker box
and replaced the aluminum wires from the drop to the breaker box with
copper.

Good luck..

BDK


I'll go with BDK on this. I too had major noise problems (beyond what
is 'normal' for urban Los Angeles area) and found several wiring
problems; not all outlets grounded, corroded connections on some
switches and outlets plus a couple that take too much space to
elaborate here on this ng. Anyway, the wiring was the orignal 1947
'workmanship' and material so I had my home 100% rewired clear up to
the pole (and had the line to the house run underground as well) and
experienced a large improvement. While you may not need to do a
rewire, it is to your benefit to do as BDK suggests and check all
wiring connections to switches, outlets and to the breakers. If you
find any of those nasty switches/outlets in which you insert wires and
a metal 'spring' retains the wire replace it with a conventional screw
type outlet/switch and you may improve your situation. If no
improvement, unplug all appliances & home electronics and see if it
improves; if it does then plug things in one at a time to find the
culprit(s) and work from there.

Good luck to you, this is not an easy or fun task but I do wish you
the best in solving the problem.
Howard