Found a weird voltage reading in an old house near the river last month

I was checking a panel in a 1920s home in St. Louis and my meter showed 125 volts on a circuit that should have been 120. Traced it back and found a loose neutral at the first junction box, which was causing the imbalance. The owner said their lights had been flickering for weeks but no one could find the cause. Has anyone else run into voltage creep like that from a simple bad connection?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_john4d ago

Oh yeah, that's classic. A floating neutral will absolutely send voltage high on one leg like that. Always check the main panel and the first junction box upstream when you see weird readings, because that's usually where the problem starts. Good catch finding it.

umamartin4d ago

My buddy had a call for a fridge that kept killing lights in a 1940s bungalow. He found 128 volts on one kitchen outlet because of a corroded neutral splice in the crawl space. The whole mess was hidden behind some old insulation. Took him half a day to track it down, but the flickering stopped for good.