Are there any electricians out there?

[TN al]

I have a perplexing problem. Last Tuesday my alarm clock went haywire. It started ticking off about six minutes for every minute in real time. It has done this once or twice in the past but each time lasted only a short while and I reset the clock and went on with life. It is still spinning like a top now three days later. I thought that the clock had bit the dust so I went to the store and bought another. It too ran through the hours like a time warp. I took both clocks to various other outlets through the house and got the same result each time. I have long suspected that the wiring in my house is substandard for other reasons so this is just fuel to the fire. Is the wiring in my house causing this? Or maybe there is something wrong with the electricity coming into the house. I mean that I once took a European alarm clock, 220 volts 60 hertz and plugged it into an American outlet, 110 volts 50 hertz. What happened was the time did not shine as bright as the clock was made to. Less voltage so the clock did not have enough power to light up to its full intensity, understandable. It also lost 10 minutes every hour. 50 hertz instead of 60 hertz so the clock ran slower. Are my clocks running so fast because I have some sort of megahertz going through my wires? If so is my fuse box some how ramping it up or is the problem with my electric company and everybody is experiencing the same thing. Is any of this causing damage to my other electrical appliances? Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. Syncronaut Seven is an electrician...

You can try to PM him. :)

If he doesn't answer, let me know... I have his e-mail addy stashed somewhere...

[MrSlayer]

2. Do you have problems with any other appliances or devices?

Sounds to me like you need a new clock.

[TN al]

3. I got one

Brand new out of the box and it did the same thing. Read the whole post.

[MrSlayer]

5. Hmm. You may have a loose neutral or something giving you weird voltages.

Since I can't get over to your house to look at it I would suggest getting a multimeter and checking the voltage at each outlet. You may need to go to your panel and make sure all the connections are tight. If you are getting too much voltage it will shorten the life of all your electronics and appliances. It doesn't seem to be enough to burn them out straight off but a voltage higher than normal will tax an appliance unnecessarily and you could have a fire hazard.

[TN al]

13. I just checked my voltages with my multimeter

in two outlets in my bedroom. In the first one it arced but didn't blow any fuse. It arced in the second one too but didn't blow any fuses either. My kids have gotten into my tools before so I suspected the problem may be with the multi meter. I got a volt meter which instead of a readout has a light for 120 volts and another for 240 volts. I put it in both outlets and they both read 120.

[nedbal]

19. Don't blame the kids, YOU must have had it set on Ohms or current

unless they took it apart and redesigned the meter any multimeter properly set on volts will not spark / arch when measuring household line voltage. period

[nedbal]

20. a loose neutral does happen, it's rare, I've heard of a case at the pole transformer....

One way for a novice to suspect a loose neutral is to turn on a 220 volt high current draw such as a electric oven or dryer and see if the incandescent lights dim or brighten significantly

[baldguy]

4. $5.99

http://www.westclox.com/control/product/~category_id=C20039/~product_id=15392

[krispos42]

8. Oh, that's the Republican method of problem-solving! :-)

Don't fix the source of the trouble, just treat the symptoms! lol

Don't reduce poverty, just build more prisons... :-p

Those clocks do work pretty well, though, I must admit...

[krispos42]

6. US is 60 Hz, the Europeans are 50 Hz

But I'm almost positive that plug-in alarm clocks use an AC-to-DC circuit for the electronics. Electronics always, as far as I know, need DC power for the diodes and such to work properly. This also explains why you can run the clock on a 9-volt battery if the power fails. There is a transformer and AC-to-DC circuitry that turns 120v/60Hz into straight 9 VDC.

When you plugged the European clock into the American outlet, the internal transformer was only able to make have as much DC voltage, 4.5 VDC, so it was like running the clock on a very weak battery. Kind of like when your watch battery gets low.

I can't think of anything that would mess up the timing circuits on the clock's printed circuit board, unless maybe you were really near an AM radio station, and the antenna was pumping enough energy into the electronics to confuse the timers.

The AC-to-DC circuitry, which consists of diodes and capacitors, should filter out a lot of interference. It almost certainly has to be happening to the clock from an external, wireless source.

[ornotna]

7. Any other problems?

When you have lights on do some go dim or bright when you turn other lights on?

[TN al]

10. No but

I have long felt that I am not getting the expected life out of my light bulbs

[ornotna]

11. You should get the power company out

Have them check your service. If they can't resolve the issue then get an electrician.

[conscious evolution]

18. Good advice

Call the pros.The OP mentioned sparking when he tried to use the meter.This could be indicative of a serious problem.Problems that should be diagnosed and repaired by a qualified electrician.
Eectrical systems that are sparking are a very bad thing.Such problems can lead to death or serious injury or to destruction and/or damage to property.

Play it safe and call the pro's.

[Junkdrawer]

9. A loooong time ago, my Electrical Engineer roommate told me...

that power companies actually monitor how many cycles they send out and will speedup or slowdown the line frequency to make sure clocks keep exact time.

Sounds to me like you have a noise generator in your house (or neighborhood) somewhere. Try unplugging suspicious large motors and, if that fails, call the power company. If you know someone with an oscilloscope, you can see the line frequency/noise directly.

[Midlodemocrat]

12. Is your house particularly old? What would cause you to think

the electrical system is substandard?

And, FWIW, if you have any reason to suspect that it is, I would recommend hiring a master electrician to go over your system.

My aunt burned to death in her apartment many years ago. She was confined to a wheelchair and there was an electrical fire in the assisted living building in which she lives. As a result, I'm more than a little afraid of the power of electricity.

Good luck to you.

[TN al]

15. The house was built in 1979

in a subdivision that had a lot of houses go up at the same time. It is a house where the contractor used the cheapest material in everything. Some time ago I had to replace the water main from the street to the house. They used galvanized steel. About a 20 year life expectancy and it lived as expected. It went under my driveway so I had to rip up my driveway to get to it. Fortunately I have a neighbor who is a general contractor and he offered me his expertise and when he had the tool to rip up the driveway for another job he brought it over and did mine for free. I have four boys and we dug up the galvanized steel and replaced it with copper. Shortly after moving in, this is the wiring story, my wife was cleaning up crumbs on the counter next to the stove when she got a horrible electrical shock. She screamed but when I touched the stove, nothing. She hesitantly touched the stove and nothing. I was making fun of her when I touched the stove again when I happened to be touching the fridge too. Shocking! To get the shock from the stove you needed to be grounded to the fridge. The stove was old so we bought a new one from Sears. When they delivered it we couldn't get the clock to work. It was digital and the old stove was a chronograph. Sears took it back and brought another. Still no clock. Sears took it back again and brought out a higher end model. Still no clock. Everything else on the stove worked fine. I got the multi meter out and found a short to ground in the outlet. We called an electrician and instead of locating the short he just ran a new line.

[Buck Turgidson]

14. Take your clock back to the store and plug it in.

You'll find that it acts screwy there too because you are looney-toons, baby. The North American electric power grid is synchronized to 60 Hertz, not 50. Everything that you have said is pure nonsense.

[Double T]

16. You need to obtain a digital multimeter that will provide RMS values.......

that will compensate for any possible voltage distortion if it exists. First, check the line voltage by inserting the red probe in the smaller phase horizontal slot. Next, insert black probe into neutral larger horizontal slot; take your reading in AC volts. Next, remove the black probe from the neutral larger horizontal slot and place it in the ground flat sided round slot; record the voltage reading in AC volts. Finally, remove the red probe from the smaller phase horizontal slot and place it in the neutral larger horizontal slot; record the voltage reading in AC volts or AC millivolts. Never touch any probe while either probe is in ANY slot. If the digital meter you obtain has a frequency measurement function, record the frequency between each of the slot positions; frequency should always be 60.0 Hz in the USA. After you have checked these voltage readings, let me know your results to determine our next step.

[soleft]

17. I think you better watch this movie

http://www.roguebotstudios.com/Movies/thealarmclock.html

[LeftyMom]

21. You need to run a level 3 diagnostic to be sure but

It sounds like you need to replace your phase inducers, recalibrate the deflector array to compensate for the increased ionizing radiation and route the energy through the power couplings in jeffries tube B on deck nine.

[ornotna]

23. Why does this make so much sense to me?

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[Recovered Repug]

22. The problem may lie with the transformer running to your house.

Since you took the clock to different outlets (probably different circuits) the source of the problem may be external. I'd definitely call the power company to have them check it out.