My coax cables are melting, and I’m trying to work with my cable company, power company, and possibly and electrician. Everything on the internet points to and “open neutral” and I can’t quite get together what it means? Shout out to all the electricians and power guys making sure our houses don’t burn down and our TVs don’t explode, by the way.
Update: Power company and an electrician came out. It wasn’t an open neutral. It was a messed up ground somewhere in my house though. (I think. The pros fixed it lol.) Thank you all for your concern though! Still don’t know jack about electricity.
In: Engineering
So, as others said, I think this refers to a situation where the neutral wire in your outlet is disconnected. The neutral wire is supposed to be the bigger of the two slots. Normally current flows between the hot wire and the neutral wire. If the connection to the neutral wire is “open” (not connected), that’s dangerous because current might flow from the hot wire to ground by another path, possibly starting a fire or shocking somebody. This is why some appliances have a ground connection in addition to the hot and neutral: if current from the hot wire isn’t making it back to the neutral wire, the ground wire (connected to the metal frame of the appliance) gives it an easy path back to ground.
So, I’m guessing that this is happening with a device that uses a two-prong plug, not a three prong plug (since a three prong plug should keep this from happening). If it’s a three prong plug, then that could mean that the ground connection on that outlet is also not connected correctly.
To be clear, this is a dangerous situation. This is the type of electrical problem that DEFINITELY HAS THE POTENTIAL TO KILL SOMEONE. You should stop using that outlet immediately, and you should be suspicious of other outlets in your house.
Get an outlet tester (they’re cheap) and go check all the outlets in your house. The problem you’re having is quite likely due to either very old wiring that wasn’t maintained well, or badly done amateur electrical work. Either of those things could mean there are other lurking problems in your house’s electrical system.
Edit:
A problem like this could affect all the outlets on the circuit. You should flip the breaker for the circuit containing the affected outlet.
Bear in mind, if devices plugged into the affected outlet (or, potentially, other outlets on the circuit) have a ‘hot’ chassis, you wouldn’t necessarily notice even if you touched them. You wouldn’t notice unless you touched them AND you were touching something with a path to ground, which could be a cable, a wet floor, another appliance, or a pipe. This is a very bad scenario, because unlike the shocks you might get from sticking a finger in a lightbulb socket, THIS situation would result in electrical current flowing between two different parts of your body, quite probably crossing your chest.
Bottom line, you need to get an electrician in there. But until you do, you should keep that entire circuit without power. As electrical faults go, this is one of the most dangerous ones you could possibly encounter in your home.
https://ringelectric.ca/the-dangerous-effects-of-a-loose-neutral-wire/
I had a problem with an occupancy light switch in my house. I replaced a couple thinking they were going bad but eventually I found an outlet that had a neutral wire that was sort of twisted together and no wire nut. It was making an intermittent connection and causing the problem. The other guy is right-find any outlets, etc that are on the same circuit and open them up. Check all the neutrals.
A neutral is just a ground, it’s the white wire in your electrical box. You can pull your outlets and see if there is a loose white wire
Out of curiosity, what happened with the ground?
Also, how does the power line melt a coax cable which is a small signals line? On top of that, how did that NOT damage things connected to it like the TV?
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