Just realized a loose neutral can mess with your whole afternoon

I was troubleshooting a flickering light in a house off Elm Street last Tuesday. Pulled the switch and found a loose neutral on the backstab connection, barely hanging on. Tightened it up and the flicker stopped, but then the owner said her microwave had been acting weird too. Checked the panel and same issue, loose neutral on the breaker. You ever find one loose connection and then start finding them everywhere?

4 comments

4 Comments

wells.karen14h ago

and ugh yeah that's totally a thing, once you find one loose neutral it's like they're hiding everywhere in the house. i had a similar thing at my place last month, fixed a buzzing outlet and then found the same mess on two more switches down the line. it's creepy how one bad connection can make you second guess everything else you touched before.

oscar74313h ago

Hold on I gotta disagree with you there @wells.karen. I mean, if you actually torque everything to spec and use the right connectors from the start, you wont have that problem. Loose neutrals usually mean someone was rushing or using old work boxes where the wire nuts just spin. Ive done a hundred outlets and never had one come back buzzing because i check each connection twice with a tug test. If you find multiple bad ones, that sounds more like a whole house wiring issue or someone who didnt know what they were doing originally, not some inevitable curse. Maybe it's just me but proper work stays tight for decades, so dont blame the wires.

angela68710h ago

Yeah but you're assuming everyone who buys a house is a master electrician. Fact is most people just plug stuff in and hope for the best. I've pulled out outlets in places I used to live and found backstabs with a single strand of copper barely hanging on. Not everyone has a torque screwdriver or even knows what a tug test is. So yeah if you're doing it right it's fine. But most houses aren't done by people like you.

averymartin10h ago

Yeah the whole backstab thing is such a gamble. I get that they're faster for production work but man, they just love to work themselves loose over time. Once you start finding them it really makes you wonder what else is hiding behind every plate in the house.