Electrician question
 

Is it normal for a breaker box to make a random loudish click or clunk or pop...can't really describe the sound. I'm certain that's where it's coming from. I'll probably call an electrician tonight and run it by him, but....

Is the power out somewhere in your house?

You could have blown a fuse, or the GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter) on something could have been tripped.

But, I think you would expect the power to be off somewhere in your house. Hopefully it's not anything serious or expensive to fix.

Did you open the box and look inside? I'd also guess it is a tripped breaker.

I find if I cant figure it out, sometimes I click ALL the breakers. One by one, I slide them off, and back on. 9 times out of ten I find at least one has popped. If I use the vacuum on the hallway plug and then turn on the bathroom light, it pops! silly house.

No it's not normal unless the circuit is tripping. They don't make any noise unless something is going on.

I'd call an electrician. I had an apartment once that had a plug that used to pop blue sparks when something was plugged into it. We just assumed it was a freak thing until we noticed the wall socket smoking one day when a fan was plugged in. We found out that the inside of the wall was on fire.

The landlord lived in the same building and had the whole house rewired. I found out that the old house still had single wires with insulators in some parts of it, including in half of the apartment I lived in!

My DH (who is an electrician) said its definitely not normal. You probably have some arcing going on. Run your hand up and down the electrical panel and the breakers to see if you feel any extra heat.

It could be the breaker itself going bad, or where the breaker connects to the buss bars. Or the wire that connects to the breaker. Or it could be coming from inside the breaker.

If you feel additional/extra heating with a breaker in the panel, its from loose connections and those become fire risks.

He wonders if there's a connection with the noise and when your furnace, stove or electric water heater clicks on. He says its something you need to get an electrician or qualified handyman to look at.

Thank you, one and all.

We have an electrician coming in a couple of hours. When I described it to him last night, he asked if I could smell anything hot or feel any heat on the box. Then he said not to worry about it (in other words, don't sit in a chair in the basement all night with a fire extinguisher on my lap...not that a fire extinguisher would necessarily be a good idea)

He'll be here in a couple of hours to check it out. We can't find any breakers that have been tripped, but it's SOMETHING, and the information I've been getting all seems to say the same thing: breaker boxes shouldn't make noises.

I'll feel a LOT better once he's been here. If I turn out to be an electrical hypochondriac, sobeit. I was raised with a HEALTHY respect for electricity. Electricity is your friend, but it can turn on you in a heartbeat.

Doing the happy dance! :D

Our electrician friend just left...there was a relay in the second breaker box that was switching or clicking or whatever relays do when the bathroom heat came on. He said "I don't know why they put THAT in there".

And it DID sound like a breaker tripping, except none of the breakers was ever tripped. :confused:

So the best of all outcomes--I wasn't imagining it, nothing bad is going to happen, and it cost us $20 and a dozen eggs. :D And I'll be able to sleep now.

WHEW!!!!

I love good news..:D

I'm glad you had it checked out, B2Y. Electricity is nothing to play around with. Always better safe than sorry. :)