OT Residential Breaker Box Humming?

What's up with that? Down there a few days ago changing furnace filters and adding softener salt didn't hear nothing. Down there again today and the damn thing is humming? Why all the sudden will one start humming for no apparent reason?

It's a 100amp coming in, 60amps going to the garage, probably 25 other breakers ranging from 15 to 30amps in box, maybe I'm running out? Although I'd expect the breaker up top to trip if so.

Does upgrading to 200amp service include new breaker box with 200amp fuse, new breakers, new service feed wire from the poll? Or can you get away with a 200amp fuse that fits the box?

Any thoughts on why it might be buzzing?

My house gonna burn down cause of it? Go easy on me, my electrical knowledge is about the equivalent to wiring outlets, lights, ceiling fans, adding/wiring up breakers and that about it Lol...

Thank you!

Brent

Oh good, nobody has a sense of humor.

It doesn't know the words.

I'll be here all week.

Stand on a piece of plywood, in dry shoes, on a dry floor, with rubber gloves, and insulated screwdriver/hex wrench and tighten up the lugs holding the largest wires.

Those are the service entrance conductors, and are energized unless the meter is pulled, or you don't pay the bill for a couple of months.

Any other conductors can be de-energized by removing fuses or turning off the breaker.

Transformers (not mentioned, not there?) buzz when windings get a bit loose.

Others will elaborate.

Tugging on wires to test tightness might be a Bad Idea.

200 amp service should replace everything from the breaker box (and possibly the breakers) to the connection to the power companies service wires. State and locality will determine exactly what is required to be replaced, and who does it. Around here, the power company will do the changeover. At my old house, you were expected to do the changeover...live.

As for the humming, if it's new, I'd open the box and check the wires to ensure nothing feels warm...but humming can be perfectly normal. Before you go grabbing on to the big feeders, you'd want to pull the meter...a non-contact IR camera would make this a little safer...but you aren't really looking for the wires to be hot anyway, it'll be the junction where you tighten the wire down. Aluminum wire, if very old breakers are still in your home, could be problematic. The aluminum expanded at different rates at temperatures, and would eventually work itself loose, causing fires and such...but this is all antique now. Like 60's and 70's I believe. All the new stuff should be safe for eternity. Old codgers still insist upon copper wires, until they see the cost of copper 2-0 per foot.

SteveBausch said:

Stand on a piece of plywood, in dry shoes, on a dry floor, with rubber gloves, and insulated screwdriver/hex wrench and tighten up the lugs holding the largest wires.

Click to expand...

Please just pull the meter. First, turn off your main circuit at the box (not a required step, but a good idea anyway) All you do is cut the little tag that's on the meter box and open it. Then grab on to the glass meter, two hands on the glass, pull straight back...might have to wobble it a little. It'll come out. If you don't kill the main breaker first and have a heavy load, you run the risk of having an arc. It's a lot less scary to know that it's just going to be a clean pull. No power to house now....just those two little posts in the meter box.

Humming can be a magnetic circuit breaker that is being loaded to a good proportion of its rating. Many thermal breakers (the usual house breaker) have a magnetic function for handling big overloads. They can hum. See if one or more breakers are loaded to max. A clamp-on meter is helpful with that.

Lots of boxes have the doorbell transformer mounted right to them, and it can hum because it is cheap and not tightly assembled. It will likely make the whole box hum.

If you pull the meter first write down the reading, in ink. On my breaker box it sounded like frying eggs. The main bus bars were Aluminum and they corroded so bad it hummed and got hot. Fix was to replace the bus bars with new copper and half the breakers were arced and corroded as well.
Need I say this was a Zinsco?
Bill D

Ah, Zinsco. A disaster waiting to happen. We sold them at my grandad’s lumber and hardware, ‘bout 50 years ago.

Thanks guys!

So it sounds like I should push/wiggle on all the breakers to make sure they are seated then start turning off breakers one by one and hopefully if it's a loose connection then I should be able to narrow it down to witch one this way.

If all the small breakers are off and it's still humming then I'll pull the power at the meter then check the main feed to the box. If still no love then I'll call an electrician. Even when I know there's no power to the box it still gives me the dribbling shits poking around in there, it scars the hell out of me!

Everything inside the box looks very clean and I see no visible signs of corrosion.

Brent

yardbird said:

What's up with that? Down there a few days ago changing furnace filters and adding softener salt didn't hear nothing. Down there again today and the damn thing is humming? Why all the sudden will one start humming for no apparent reason?

It's a 100amp coming in, 60amps going to the garage, probably 25 other breakers ranging from 15 to 30amps in box, maybe I'm running out? Although I'd expect the breaker up top to trip if so.

Does upgrading to 200amp service include new breaker box with 200amp fuse, new breakers, new service feed wire from the poll? Or can you get away with a 200amp fuse that fits the box?

Any thoughts on why it might be buzzing?

My house gonna burn down cause of it? Go easy on me, my electrical knowledge is about the equivalent to wiring outlets, lights, ceiling fans, adding/wiring up breakers and that about it Lol...

Thank you!

Brent

Click to expand...

Mine was installed over 30 years ago as part of a renovation. Square-D, "QO". Aluminium wire to it, professionally done with the correct alloy from the local utility.

Hum? Yep. Got that. Day-One to the present day, and "seasonal".

However..it turned out to be a small 24 VAC control transformer installed in the bottom of the service entrance loadcenter, not obvious it was even THERE behind all the wires.

It powers the electric baseboard heat thermostats (many)...and.. relay coils on a portion of those that control more baseboard heaters than the main contacts are rated for. Power-OFF the heat circuits? As I do spring and fall to prevent heat & (separate) AC getting into an expensive bun-fight. No more hum.

Meanwhile.. thirty-plus years since renovation install (1980's) , the Aluminium feed connections have never needed "tightening".

A PREVIOUS alloy of Aluminium almost certainly would have needed that - better-yet, REPLACED, and clear back to the Powerco transformer.

On which score.. three prior properties, I have paid extra to have the Powerco run COPPER. A mere $80, one go, pull old, convert from overhead to underground ..but..but..Powerco had just marched a line of tall 130 kV towers down the other side of the street, so were being inordinately cooperative.

Around $800 "extra" next go, new construction, also underground. I'd guess $5,000 if I were to do it at today's Copper prices on this home - underground from the outset. So long as the Aluminium continues to behave well, no need. I just do NOT use it on anything departing the panel. Ever.

The tires and plywood? Too many sins of me own to cast a stone, but.. NONE of that is really a Harry Homeowner task. One also needs long years of training & habituation to how to move around live circuits in general. One hand in the pocket, what type of gloves and other safety gear, and a whole lot more. Holes & poles linemen, telco outside plant folk, TO Utility Military Engineers, have this set of "ways" in ingrained, life-saving HABIT at the "muscle memory" level. Joe Average does not have that automagical behaviour pattern set. Huge risk for him to hope he can learn it "OJT or fry" on the one job.

Surely hope it is as simple as a thermostat/doorbell/HVAC/heat/hot water - wotever- relay "control" transformer in your own case as well.

If not, "from a safe distance", aim a non-contact thermal-sensing gun at the panel. Cheap ones are good enough.

Hot spots WILL exist, but should not be dramatic. Licensed Master Electrician - "accept no substitutes" - can sort a problem if there is one.

2CW

snowman said:

Please just pull the meter. First, turn off your main circuit at the box (not a required step, but a good idea anyway) All you do is cut the little tag that's on the meter box and open it.

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BTW... the electric company will be pissed that you cut their security tag and will replace it with a much more substantial one! The new tag is not bolt cutter proof, though.

Mike

mister honey said:

BTW... the electric company will be pissed that you cut their security tag

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Not actually even legal to cut it for non-emergency reasons, AFAIK.

"Back in the day", many of the common meters could be installed upside-down, and would run backwards. I know of at least one case where a greedy guy here in suburban VA ran his that way on a regular basis one week out of every month. Net-net of three weeks normal, one in reverse was a 50% cut in the electric bill.

Larfed my arse off when I heard the Powerco had twigged to the sudden change that continued for over a year, and started diverting "whomever" was in the area to lay an eyeball on it.

Seems he gave it up the day his wife was stalling a Powerco tech out on the front lawn while he ran around the back in a panic to put the meter back up right. Feeling pleased with himself until one of his kids shouts - loud enough for all to hear:

"Hey Dad? The lights have all gone out again and we'll have to reset all the clocks!
Pre personal computer and battery clock days, etc.

IF I ever have to do any mods here, I'll want a new entrance of the sort that also has a master "disconnect" ahead of the entrance loadcenter, not just the classical meter-as-disconnect.

mister honey said:

BTW... the electric company will be pissed that you cut their security tag and will replace it with a much more substantial one! The new tag is not bolt cutter proof, though.

Mike

Click to expand...

Around here they don't care...or at least the old house. I pulled it all the time when doing renovations.

But that was also the same place where the power co expected you to move the feeders live.



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Monarchist said:

Not actually even legal to cut it for non-emergency reasons, AFAIK.

"Back in the day", many of the common meters could be installed upside-down, and would run backwards. I know of at least one case where a greedy guy here in suburban VA ran his that way on a regular basis one week out of every month. Net-net of three weeks normal, one in reverse was a 50% cut in the electric bill.

Click to expand...

I had an electrician tell me that the power company wouldn't get pissed at you if you called them and told them that you were doing renovations and would be removing the meter temporarily. I didn't do it, I had them install a main breaker at the service entrance so I can disable everything before it comes inside the house.

I'm trying to figure out how turning the meter upside down will make the meter run backwards. After all, we're talking AC current here.

steve45 said:

I had an electrician tell me that the power company wouldn't get pissed at you if you called them and told them that you were doing renovations and would be removing the meter temporarily. I didn't do it, I had them install a main breaker at the service entrance so I can disable everything before it comes inside the house.

I'm trying to figure out how turning the meter upside down will make the meter run backwards. After all, we're talking AC current here.

Click to expand...

It worked in the early 1970's on meters from new installations as late as the 1960's. VP of one of the major New England power companies confirmed it to me.

I'd seriously doubt any even half-way "modern" meter - '80's or '90's onward - still does that. They were meant for long service lives, but the move to remote-reading wudda seen to general replacement, and Powerco's had NO reason to preserve a glitch that was costing them money and raising the hassle of arguments or prosecution (it's felony THEFT, after all...), even if only now and then.

one or more of your breakers are failing, did they get wet?

yardbird said:

...Does upgrading to 200amp service include new breaker box with 200amp fuse, new breakers, new service feed wire from the poll? Or can you get away with a 200amp fuse that fits the box?...

Click to expand...

At my previous home, I hired an electrical contractor to upgrade from 100 A to 200 A. He did it the easy and cheaper way by adding a second 100 A box next to the original. Saved a lot by not having to mess with the original house wiring except for the wires from the boxes to the new meter base. The electric utility ran a new wire from the pole to the new meter base and installed a new meter for free. All my machine tools and shop lighting got hooked up to the new box.

Larry

New meters in our area send out a wireless signal. No more meter readers. Saying that if you pull the meter a signal will be sent that meter is pulled. I like the breaker off one at a time, until no more humming.

Shut everything down and then turn one breaker on at a time. You should have a distribution map of what each breaker is protecting in the residence. By process of elimination the humming breaker can be found.

Bill D said:

If you pull the meter first write down the reading, in ink. On my breaker box it sounded like frying eggs. The main bus bars were Aluminum and they corroded so bad it hummed and got hot. Fix was to replace the bus bars with new copper and half the breakers were arced and corroded as well.
Need I say this was a Zinsco?
Bill D

Click to expand...

Zinsco, the name that strikes fear into knowledgeable electricians! They certainly do have a bad name, if not for problems with them, then for the inflated prices that they are sold for whenever you need a replacement. Thankfully my house has 200 amp service with proper breakers (GE?) and no problems there except for an occasional corroded breaker due to the box being on the back of the house on the weather side.

All that said, I have a Zinsco-populated subpanel in my barn that was installed for me back in 1979 by an electrician when the barn was built. I don't know how I wound up with a Zinsco type box but to tell the truth I've never had a problem with any of the 10 or so breakers that are in there. It's got 100 amps coming in from the house and the largest breaker is 70 amps for a welding circuit. I guess it's been OK because it's inside out of the weather and stays dry.

When I found out about Zinscos a few years ago, I was about to change out the subpanel and all of the breakers. That idea was put to rest when my son gave me an entire box of mostly unused Zinsco breakers of all different sizes, probably 25 of them. He was given them by an electrician friend of his.

So with what is essentially a lifetime's worth of breakers, I'm set. LOL.

What others say about the wires possibly being loose and causing buzzing or humming is right on point.

This morning I grab a light and tools then go back down to the box and the humming is gone? I took the front panel off, wiggled/pushed on all the breakers just for the hell of it then put front panel back on and went upstairs.

Yesterday after I noticed this I went upstairs and turned everything off. The only things that could have running was digital clocks and maybe the refrigerator/freezer so I don't know?

Maybe it was the shit running out in the garage? That's the only difference from yesterday and today? Pretty sure it wasn't all in my head. Lol...

Brent