Open neutral

The main effect is that the lights in the house dim and get brighter for no apparent reason. Is an open neutral dangerous? Some lights may get bright enough to burn out. Open Neutral Wiring In an electrical system, ground and neutral are connected together in one location only, at the neutral point. The voltage on a neutral wire is normally 0V (volts) on a live circuit.

If for example you test a outlet in a room, and the tester shows that you have an open neutral , Then somewhere along the circuit the neutral is not connected properly. In rooms most outlets are connected in series to each other, so if you have an open neutral in one outlet, it can affect all the other outlets too. When you get to the device where this voltage is zero, the open is between this device and the previous one tested.

The most common reason for a open neutral is a bad connection. Let that sink in for a minute. On most receptacles there are two ways to terminate wiring.

One way is to strip your wire and curl a hook to tighten around a the device set screw. One is whether the hot or the neutral is open. The other is the extent of the outage compared to the extent of that circuit. If a tester reveals Hotness still present at more than one dead item of the circuit (at the shorter slot of receptacles or the tongue in the bottom of a turned-on standard light socket, for instance), the neutral is open. Open Neutral If the tester is correct, this means the receptacle is not working because, even though the black wire is hot, the white ( neutral ) wire is not connected well somewhere, so that it cannot carry any current back to the main panel.

The hot (black wires) were still connected and the breaker was back on, but without the neutral path the light won’t work, and the neutral ahead of that open splice will have power on it, the same as the hot wire. In the event of an open neutral , the current will seek the path of least resistance. Not only can it destroy your electronics, but it can also be dangerous to you.

Isolate the branch circuit breaker. But I never stopped to check why. Under current code ALL receptacles in garage must be GFCI. Open neutral is just that an open neutral (white) wire.

If the code was not in effect at time of construction you are grandfathered and not required to install them. Remove existing receptacle and put in GFCI receptacle. If electronic devices are running hotter than normal or sound different, this is also an indication. Power strips (re-locatable power taps) can be vulnerable to open neutral s as well.

Many power strips offer “surge protection” in the form of MOV’s (metal oxide varistors). Contact an electrician. An open neutral is obviously something which needs to be identified and corrected.

Lose the neutral , and you no longer have supply for the relay, and the contacts open. By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our cookie policy unless you have disabled them. I advised her to shut off all the breakers in the home as having an open neutral can cause all sorts of problems, especially if some of the 240V loads are turned on or activated.

When you have a broken neutral situation, especially at the supply, you can get all kinds of undesirable situations that can cause appliances to get fed with voltages ranging from zero to 240V. There is no easy way to find an open neutral. You have to check thru the circuit to find where it opened.

Those stabs weaken with age and just open up. In the diagram above, the A phase circuit breaker is turned off on a multi- wire branch circuit. The illustration below shows locations. A and C) and in the neutral line (B, and E).

Only one of them would cause a problem. A lot of times the culprit is a loose connection inside an outlet box. Could be either where they twisted together the neutrals in a wire nut, or at the outlet itself. Try to backtrack the wiring going back to the breaker box. There are probably some outlets on that circuit with your fans.

No metal water main and no gas line. This could show that the circuit has an open neutral connection. A neutral should not be switched.

Was a neutral spliced in the same box as the switch or did you just have a black and a white connected to the switch? Sounds like that could be an intermittent neutral or an intermittent hot wire. The only way to tell which it is, is to monitor the hot voltage to ground (not neutral ) and see if it fluctuates when the lights start flashing.