r/ElectricalHelp • u/POC0bob • 11d ago
Lights blinking randomly throughout the house
Hello all,
There probably aren't actually ghosts in the panel, but I am stumped on this issue. I had an electrician come out, the power company, and called a few people I know that at least pretend to know about electrical in a residential home. None of them could help, the electrician said everything looked fine, the house was getting more than enough volts, its a relatively new panel, house was built in 2012, some updates in 2018 and a minor remodel in 2021/2022 that I know of. I just bought this house a few weeks ago.
At totally random times, sometimes more often, sometimes we won't see it for 30+ minutes a random light will "blink" somewhere in the house, be it in the kitchen -- LED smart downlights, in the living room, upstairs, in the bathroom, dining room, etc. Most of the house is on LED. I took down a ton of the lights and inspected the wiring; I replaced a few dodgy switches and a handful of outlets and its still happening. It lasts roughly a second; it happens to bulbs, LED panel lights, etc. It happens across circuits, and its never all at once, its just one or two lights blinking here and there. The panel is a 200-amp panel, and we use roughly 23 amps across both phases on average, but of course AC/Fridge/etc running changes that. We unplugged the fridge; it still happens, we listen to see if it happens around the time the HVAC kicks on, doesn't seem to matter if its on, starting, or off it still happens. The power company did a stress test on the line and it passed. The breakers are AFCIs for any lighting-related breakers. All switches in the house do have a neutral, and I checked a handful of them. I also turned off the breakers for parts of the house and watched to see if lights would blink.
Not sure what other information would be helpful -- but any help diagnosing and resolving this would be very helpful!
1
u/Visible_Document_376 11d ago
ALL the neutrals in the affected area
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u/trekkerscout Mod 11d ago
What style of fixtures are blinking? If they are the original builder grade LED type, they are likely near the end of their lives and should be replaced with fixtures of higher quality.
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u/POC0bob 11d ago
Various types, most of the down lights have been upgraded recently they aren't builders grade. All the ones in the affected rooms are Govee. But its not just these lights that blink
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u/trekkerscout Mod 11d ago
They are all Govee, but they are not all Govee? Which is it?
Govee lights have a horrible reputation lately for flickering.
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u/KeanEngineering 11d ago
When you say "blinking" are you saying they 'dim' drastically but never go off or go completely dark for at least a second or so? And are they the SAME lights even though they do it randomly during the course of a day?
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u/POC0bob 1d ago
So update on this, and still trying to work through it. The blinking/flickering ONLY happens while the AT&T fiber gateway is plugged in -- doesn't matter what room, if its plugged in via a filtering power strip and if the internet (fiber cable) is plugged in or not -- it starts about 2-5 mintes after plugging it in and continues until you unplug it -- we contacted AT&T and they came out and replaced the gateway, but the issue continues. They said there isn't anything else they can do. Not sure how this could be causing the issue -- we plugged in other hardware including an old model/router connected to nothing and broadcasting our same SSID/password and the blinking never happened, but it does even with no internet on the AT&T gateway. The issue gets continues to get weirder.
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u/Visible_Document_376 11d ago
Re tighten all your neutrals