Something Really Electrically Strange In Our Home

[Warren Whiteside]

On 10/9/2013 12:00 PM, George Handley wrote:
> Good morning Chuck and Warren,
>
> It's obvious I've gained both your attentions for a couple of subjects 
> I don't ever recall seeing on this list in 14 years.
>
> First off Warren, I do have UPSs in this house... three of them... 
> controlling ALL critical equipment... including the Mini. All are 
> working fine, or would be telling me via audible alert.
Yes George. It would signal NO voltage. What do you notice with the 
digital readout for your incoming? Is it pretty stable?
>
> No... I have not measured the cycle frequency... don't even think my 
> meters have that as a selection. With ALL critical stuff on UPSs... 
> wouldn't that regulate the frequency all by itself even if I ever did 
> have utility frequency problems?
That is a very good question that would require me looking for the specs 
on mine. Just offhand, I don't think anyone looks at frequency variation 
from the 60 cycles. What brings it to my mind is what the 50 cycle 
European AC can do to equipment designed for 60 cycle.
>
> Chuck, I have, over the last four years, replaced many old style X10 
> switches with the higher watt and fancier Leviton and now SmartHome 
> X10 compatible 1000w switches with their left sides of the switch 
> filled with a vertical line of LED indicator lights to let you know 
> where the dimmer is set or to change it. They actually helped bring 
> some more stability to my system, and no, I have never seen one of 
> those act crazy as you reported, but you can believe I'll now be on 
> the look out for that.
>
> RE: "Like you, I am searching for something that is more stable. I am 
> growing weary of constantly working on the system to keep it 
> functional. In the last year or so the system has become increasingly 
> more and more unreliable. "
>
> Actually, until recently, I have enjoyed at least 2.5 years of X10 
> bliss with total stability. When I had noise and signal suckers (And I 
> do believe I've now trapped for both) all sorts of kooky things would 
> happen. As I began to mop up the problems, I still had about a half 
> dozen units (On both phases) that would not always cooperate. They 
> kinda turned out to be my daily barometer to know if there is 
> something wrong. Even that stopped for almost 2.5 years.
Is there some correlation with the advent of "smart metering"?
>
> Until last night, when I noticed two scheduled events did not occur 
> during our absence... not even in the log... did I rule back in the 
> equation that XTension, Mountain Lion or hardware someplace was my 
> current status, but that is all speculation until I can speak with 
> greater authority about something wrong consistently or repeatable 
> that I know where to go next.
>
> I am still in the hopes that someone on this list, learning that even 
> putting in a X10 blessed whole house surge protector across both 
> phases starts the problems again will tell that person what problem I 
> have to be fighting, because that fact really blows my mind. I ended 
> up having to remove all four wires from this filter to get back to 
> close to normal. I want to say that again, but even stronger. I 
> learned that my problems didn't mostly go away until I had removed not 
> only the two line wires on either phase, I had to remove BOTH the 
> common AND THE GROUND wires before happiness re-arrived.
OH, oh.. Do you have a compromised ground? In certain areas ground rods 
will lose their copper clad through stuff in the soil along with really 
wet conditions. I'm in an area that was typical glacial soil build up 
and in the main sediment type soil that is fairly well drained (lots of 
gravel and sands) Many years ago I had this house bricked and needed to 
have a brick footer because the original footer had no brick shelf. So, 
while digging and the pouring this new (interlocked with the old one) 
footer I took the time to install my version of the "Uffer" grounding 
system. I had some scrap 350mcm copper stranded wire that I stripped 
down about a 17 foot piece that I tied (with copper wire) to the top 
side of bricks which I laid at 3 foot intervals at the bottom of the 
footer before the concrete was poured. I left a generous tail above the 
pour and clamped a heavier than NECA code solid piece of copper wire to 
it. The inspector insisted that I remove that and install the smaller 
code size wire. I complied and got my green approval sticker for my 
service after he also insisted that I drive a ground rod and clamp my 
panel ground to it. ( he had no clue about my uffer system) So I did 
that and also kept my uffer system in the grounding. The result is that 
I am sure I still have more than the minimum required ground integrity. 
Lightening strikes at my service pole tell me that my ground is a good 
one and maybe better than my neighbors might have.<g>

Warren
>
> That just ain't right, and should be a dead giveaway to someone here 
> about what, at least in part, I have to be fighting?
>
> Another option, for which I was temporarily stopped, is to conduct all 
> the XTension startup tests James was nice enough to layout for me. 
> Could it be possible that I have some corrupt scripts that would 
> explain this? I have always felt my upgrading to ML from SL started 
> all my problems, but I don't believe Michael or James buy into that.
>
> Please everyone... if you have some hunch that I could try, it would 
> sure be appreciated t5o hear from you.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> George
>
>
>
> On Oct 9, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Warren Whiteside 
> <warrenwhiteside at verizon.net <mailto:warrenwhiteside at verizon.net>> wrote:
>
> Good morning George. It sounds like you are on the right path towards 
> isolating the culprit. Have you ever audited what your power company 
> is sending you? I think most of us with backup (ups) that has a 
> digital meter can see the sometimes wild fluctuations in voltage but 
> I've often wondered how constant the 60 cycle part remains. I have a 
> whole house surge protector but now also have a small solar array 
> which I believe helps mitigate any problems that may be coming via my 
> utility supplied electricity. Power regulation was not my intent 
> with the solar but I see it as an unintended asset for low voltage. 
> Could it be that the mini is more susceptible to utility supplied 
> fluctuations?
>
> On Oct 9, 2013, at 8:23 AM, Chuck <xtension4osx at mac.com 
> <mailto:xtension4osx at mac.com>> wrote:
>
>> George,
>>
>> I recently had a similar issue I was getting a flood of commands from 
>> somewhere and I couldn't track it down. Both my CM11a and LynX PLC 
>> were incapacitated with a flood of noise. Nothing worked. There was 
>> nothing in the log that showed any signals coming in. I figured my 
>> wife might have stuck a remote in a drawer somewhere and it had one 
>> of the buttons pressed. That was not the case.
>>
>> I tried every trick in the book I could think of to make it work 
>> including turning off the electricity to the whole house in hopes of 
>> resetting whatever was causing the problem. I told my wife we were in 
>> total manual mode till I could figure it out.
>>
>> One thing I did notice is that some of my nice Leviton switches that 
>> have the LED that blinks when there is a command coming in were 
>> blinking constantly. I had seen this once before many years ago in a 
>> similar situation. Due to some commitments I had to leave town for a 
>> week and didn't have time to troubleshoot the system.
>>
>> When I got back I was too tired to take it on and went to bed. The 
>> next morning I woke up and noticed that the Leviton LEDs were not 
>> blinking constantly anymore. I tried the system and everything was 
>> back on line except one light. The basement light will not work 
>> anymore. It is one of the old X10 switches and nothing I do will make 
>> it work. I can manually turn it on and off at the switch but that is 
>> the only way it functions.
>>
>> I have no conclusive proof of anything but I am guessing that that 
>> old X10 switch just died and flooded my system with lots of noise. I 
>> intend to replace it with a Z-wave module.
>>
>> Like you, I am searching for something that is more stable. I am 
>> growing weary of constantly working on the system to keep it 
>> functional. In the last year or so the system has become increasingly 
>> more and more unreliable. I lose connections with interfaces, 
>> XTension freezes, and it takes forever to have a light come in so we 
>> are always turning on the lights manually.
>>
>> Something has to change for my wife and I.
>>
>> Chuck
>>
>>
>> On Oct 8, 2013, at 10:56 PM, George Handley <ghandley at kc.rr.com 
>> <mailto:ghandley at kc.rr.com>> wrote:
>>
>>> Warren,
>>>
>>> Thank you for your ideas. I hope I do understand the basics of PLC 
>>> (X10) and this current crop of problems I'm experiencing, I've never 
>>> seen.
>>>
>>> Like missed scheduled events. Certain lights not coming on or off in 
>>> a long string of simple commands. Lots of things not working 
>>> requiring the quitting and re-launching of XTension, and 
>>> occasionally, the rebooting of my Mini running XTension. Getting rid 
>>> of the whole house filter and new GFI cleaned things up 90%, but now 
>>> there is still not the stability I had.
>>>
>>> I run my XTension through a headless Mini using screen sharing, and 
>>> tonight I discovered I accidentally restarted my iMac instead of the 
>>> Mini in a last ditch effort to straighten things out.
>>>
>>> When I finally got my iMac back up, I discovered re-booting it 
>>> straightened out the XTension problems running on the Mini! I didn't 
>>> need to restart the Mini. This is craziness.
>>>
>>> I just need brute force of time to watch for a pattern. I'm sure 
>>> it's something I did, but in places, it's brought my system to it's 
>>> knees, and the whole house filter thing has really got me stymied.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> George
>>>
>
>
>
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