Remember Red & Yellow lights caused by black Hot in White hole can blow triacs over time

Hello
I do not see this very often but this was in a house built in the late 1700s. The age of the house here really seems irrelevant because the AC outlet that the pellet stove was plugged into, is a new 3 prong outlet wired to a modern circuit breaker panel and properly grounded. Therefore it can happen anywhere!
I have seen this particular miss wire blow the exhaust blower triac on the sturdy Englander 25 PDVC after approx 3 years. Then the exhaust blower would not run even though the blower tested good with an AC test cord.
Luckily in this case, the stove was an older Lennox Whitfield Traditions T300P That was not in this house very long and it still works.
See pics

 

Ah yesssss...
Seen this mistake a time or two.

What really sucks is when somebody has crossed a neutral wire with a hot leg elsewhere in the house in a junction box.

Helped a buddy once.
They had a light switch that turned on a hall light, but when it was on the dinning room lights would glow slightly.

Took some digging in the attic to find the box that had the wires mixed up.

It was an owner built/remodeled house from around the early 40's that had seen several additions and the owner was a real hack.

After we scared up the glow light issue we also discovered that the grounded third leg was not connected to anything.

It had been clamped to the water pipe, but had broken off at some time.

Water pipe grounds are a NO NO anyway.

We bored a small hole in the garage floor (1 inch) and worked a copper clad ground rod down and reconnected the ground.

The electronic components in these new stoves are sketchy enough without making them deal with a phase swap issue to boot.

The fan motors and the auger motors usually don't care about which wire goes where, but the controllers don't like it. (Many times both wires will be black or white or ???)


Thanks for sharing this Don

Most folks would not give a second thought to the possibility of having a plug wired wrong.

I massaged the piccy of the cool little meter for y'all
A bit easier to see the critter..

 

yup....we use them too on installs.....one of the first things we do....tell the homeowner what to expect on the gadget, if it shows as anything but that, they'll need an electrician to rectify it, otherwise the warranty is null......its actually not all that uncommon.

 

I only looked at this because the title was all Greek to me an I had to find out what the hoopla was about (or checking to see if you were having a stroke and your words were coming out garbled ). After seeing the picture and comparing to the title, it makes sense to me now.

 

That is why I made the title detailed and cryptic, not only to arouse curiosity but to show how mysterious electricity is because we cannot see it and with some pics hopefully explain what can go wrong.
Thanks for your comments BogieB