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ashley_klesmit

Lights Flickering on New Build

Ashley K
last year

It’s a long story, but I want to see if anyone has seen this before. If you like mysteries, this one is for you.

We moved into our new build 10/31. We noticed that the light fixtures (not the can lights) would flicker for a couple seconds randomly. We didn’t think there was a pattern to it. It wasn’t when the AC or refrigerator kicked on. It was truly random and it happened at all times of the day.

The electrician came out and tightened the screws on the breaker box. The flickering continued. He said it wasn’t anything on his end. He said he had seen it once before where one LED bulb was causing multiple lights to flicker. We didn’t think that was the issue for us, but we had every single bulb in the house replaced anyways. The flickering continued.

We then had the electric company come out. They tightened the wires running to the house and replaced our brand new meter with another brand new meter. They ran a load test and confirmed that the power coming into the house was fine and said it wasn’t an issue on their end. The flickering continued.

We then talked to our neighbor (we had talked to one before who said he wasn’t having any issues) and found out that he had been having the same problem since he moved in over a year ago. He had a different builder & different electrician, so we then knew it wasn’t an issue with our electrical work.

We had the electric company come back out, and they installed a recorder on our meter to see if they could catch any anomalies. We started tracking when the flickering would happen, and we noticed it happens almost every 15 minutes on the 30 second mark and it happens at the same time every day. It got to the point where we’d look at the clock and could count down to when it would happen. It happens on every fixture that’s on at the time. Our neighbor did the same thing, and his lights flicker at the exact same time as ours.

The electric company come back out again today to remove the recorder. We shared our findings with him, and he said that was super strange and that a transformer doesn’t have any timed mechanism in it that would cause that. They’re likely going to replace the transformer just to be certain. He said that he has seen once before where this was happening and it was because of a faulty refrigerator that was pulling power from the transformer and making lights flicker. He was confused though as to why ours is on such a set schedule. In that instance, the house was the only house on the transformer.

I’m going to propose that the electric company turns off electricity at each house for 15-20 minutes during the times that we’ve for sure seen the flickering to see if possibly one house is causing the flickering. It isn’t our house since the flickering was happening at our neighbors house before our house even started to be built.

(If you’ve made it this far, thank you!!)

Basically, there are three houses on one transformer. Two of them are seeing the flickering issue. One of them used to see the flickering issue. We’re trying to confirm with him if he still sees it. He was the first house built that’s on this transformer. All houses were built about a year apart & had different builders. They’re all less than three years old.

We’re desperate. Has anyone ever seen anything like this?!

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