Bed heater making lights on the same circuit flicker
Hi all - I noticed that when the bed heater on my Mini+ hits temperature and goes into "maintain temp" mode, it's causing LED lightbulbs on the same circuit that it's plugged into to flicker dimly in time with the heater cycling. It's not turning them all the way off, but making them kind of buzz visually. I'm in the US, and it's plugged into a 110v 10A circuit; I don't have any reason to suspect house wiring. I've tried other brands of bulbs, and they flicker the same (or worse, depending on quality).
Is this normal for the power draw to be this rapidly spiky? My first thought was to put a small UPS in between the Mini and the outlet to add a buffer, but not sure if there's a better solution.
RE: Bed heater making lights on the same circuit flicker
Only an online ups would make a difference. Normal ups''s bypass the battery when mains is good
I try to make safe suggestions,You should understand the context and ensure you are happy that they are safe before attempting to apply my suggestions, what you do, is YOUR responsibility. Location Halifax UK
RE: Bed heater making lights on the same circuit flicker
Would putting it on a beefier circuit (15 or 20A) potentially help?
RE: Bed heater making lights on the same circuit flicker
heavier cable would help
a beafier breaker may mean you have more load on the same circuit... that might negate the beafier cable benefits
if you have an available circuit, give it a try
Joan
I try to make safe suggestions,You should understand the context and ensure you are happy that they are safe before attempting to apply my suggestions, what you do, is YOUR responsibility. Location Halifax UK
RE: Bed heater making lights on the same circuit flicker
You may be having too much load on the line already, which leads to brownouts and thus light flickering.
Some things to check:
- Check the lines and replace the circuit breaker, some start to misbehave like that when they are near death.
- Inspect and clean up the plugs (of course when they are disconnected from electricity), recheck if the screws and nuts/bolts are not getting loose, if they are dirty or loose you can get poor contact which leads to the losses on conductivity and can be real fire hazard.
- Check if you have a splitter with filters - some filters are actually making things worse.
- Too weak cables for given load - check if the cables are getting warm - especially if you use splitter, check if the cable before the split is warm. If so, then you probably have too much load on the splitter itself.
For example too thin AWG cables in splitters/extenders, which are okay for lights but not good enough for higher loads, especially if you connect certain devices to the wrong circuit. Just getting beefier circuit breaker (like 20A instead of 10A) just on this one line where printer is connected is just asking for trouble - due to overload it will just make circuit breaker not to be triggered if the load is too high if you cables are too thin or if you have other issues with the cabling.
Either way it is worth to check if your installation is okay especially near the mains, because such brownouts should not really happen.
Some old buildings for example have aluminium cables which tend to rot in time and start to conduct worse over time, leading to voltage drops etc.
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RE: Bed heater making lights on the same circuit flicker
Going to check the load on that circuit - I have a smallish air purifier on the same outlet, next guess may be just too much wattage getting pulled at once.
Fair point about the wiring, will be something I need to investigate. House is ca. mid-'90s construction, so I would hope it's all copper. Haven't run into any other gremlins, so not ready to call in a professional yet.