Help! - House electrics blown by grow case!

Got home this evening to find the electricity off! The emergency services guy traced the problem to a socket in the room with the stealth grow.

The lights are now back on, but half of the sockets in the house are still not working.

I have a 65w and two 23w cfl's wired to one socket, and a couple of pc fans wired to another. However its been running apparently fine for 3 weeks now. Could this be the root of the problem?

Any assistance for a 1st time grower would be much appreciated.
(in the UK).

Cheers

If you have sockets that still aren't working you need an electrician to check your homes wiring. Especially if it's an older building or if it was part of some mass production cookie-cutter home that you got for way below market value, when contractors tend to cut corners. If it's been running fine for 3 weeks with no problems it's an indicator that you aren't drawing too much electricity, but rather that there's a problem with your wiring *perhaps even some dumb critters gnawing on wires*

crawl @ in the attic or below and investigate for any tampering, by mice perhaps. that's not much of an electrical load. good luck!

Cheers lads, I didn't think it was drawing much, besides I thought they're 3kW sockets anyway...

In the electrical trade up here in Canada. Judging on the limited information, and without investigating the issue, here is what I can suggest.

Based on what you describe (A low wattage set up) I find it hard to believe that your grow could be the problem. Not sure if the emergency services guy is an electrician, but assuming he was it would be hard for me to argue with his observation without looking at the problem myself. If he went through the paces and tested all the receptacles and circuits with a meter and indeed found that initial outlet to be the source of the problems, then its probably the case. If he did not do this, then I would suggest it could be a multitude of issues. Make sure you check the breaker that feeds the outlets in question, do the math and figure out the wattage available. Then test the CCT with a meter when you have EVERYTHING turned on, see what you are currently drawing (amps, volts, watts) and as long as you are within the 80% allowable load for your CCT, then it wont be the issue.

If its not, then I suggest you call a qualified electrician to check out the issue for you as it could be a potential safety hazard waiting to surface.

And please remember whenever your troubleshooting or maintaining anything electrical, ensure the breaker feeding the devices is turned off, and then test again just to be sure.

Good luck!

wtf? if i put too much of a load, or a short circuit on one of my sockets it trips the breaker. i just unplug what ever it is and flip the breaker back on.

hughesresearch said:

wtf? if i put too much of a load, or a short circuit on one of my sockets it trips the breaker. i just unplug what ever it is and flip the breaker back on.

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That's a good method to burn your house down. What if the breaker doesn't trip? It happens ya know. Then your wires get mega hot inside your walls..sniff, sniff, do you smell something burning?

legallyflying said:

That's a good method to burn your house down. What if the breaker doesn't trip? It happens ya know. Then your wires get mega hot inside your walls..sniff, sniff, do you smell something burning?

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i mean i dont use this in practice! it has happened twice on me, one was from trying to run 1300w through one outlet, yea dumb, but it just shut the power of in that room. the other time i had a fan i had been storing and when i plugged it in and turned it on, power went out. fan had a short in it. i also live in a house only 5yrs old. im paranoid about a house fire, trust me, i have an automatic fire extinguisher in all three rooms.

Like I said before... it could be something as simple as what "hughesresearch" describes.. or it could be just a symptom of something much more serious. Either way, just be careful when troubleshooting.

We've had problems with the electrics in this house before. It seems a few corners were cut with the original wiring. I just wanted to be certain that the grow case couldn't cause this type of problem.

naw man, your pullin what? 200w tops? my 360 pulls that much lol.

It's not your box. It's the outlet. Perhaps old wiring. I had 1 house lamp blow out a third of my condo because the wiring behind the wall was old.

just curious is this a pretty old house or was the previous prob incorrect wiring? from where im at, most electricians hire a bunch of kids to do most the work while the electrician themselves are running supplies and getting jobs. when my house was built, i had to have my father (30y contractor in MI and FL), watch how the whole house was built. they redid half of there work cause of cutting corners. on top of that the fuckin cement guys layed the foundation a foot short in the front and back making the porches bigger and me losing 120sq' of house...which also caused everything to be built smaller. needless to say, i got my money back and he is no longer in business.