[pomaikai]

I am in the middle of a kitchen remodel and I moved the dishwasher and garbage disposal. I have yet to rerun the dedicated line under the sink, but will be done within the week, so it's currently on a circuit with my kitchen and living room lights. All are either LED or fluorescent so very low wattage. Issue is when my dishwasher motor kicks on the lights dim for a second and then get bright again. I know this is from a voltage drop usually due to a large load. Is this OK and normal? Trying to decide if I can use dishwasher this week or have to wait until I run the dedicated 20amp circuit. My biggest worry is this happening on a 20amp breaker with 14ga Romex. In process of changing breakers to 15 amps that are on 14ga Romex. House built in 75 and it looks like it was built with 14ga on 20amp breakers.

 

[AllanJ]

A 20 amp breaker on a 14 gauge line will not cause these symptoms.

Slight momentary dimming of lights is usually not a problem.

If there were a problem, that would be a loose connection in wiring that is shared by both the dishwasher and the lights which would be in the panel or in wiring upstream of the panel.

Are the dimming lights temporarily on the same branch circuit as the dishwasher? This should not be true after you have finished your project.

 

[pomaikai]

Its on same circuit as lights and at end of run. Just temporary for a week. I just plugged it into the closest outlet which is now a living room outlet. Only other option was to share an outlet with fridge. Lights only dim for a second when motor kicks on.

 

[jimn]

Don't worry about it. It's only temporary. You should not have a 20 amp breaker on 120 volt circuit with 14 Guage wire. It is not causing the problem but it is not safe either

 

[pomaikai]

OK, I am working on changing everything over to 15amp that's 14gauge. I have converted over 3 breakers so far. They are old Wadsworth breakers and I haven't made it to panel yet. So they are hard to find unless you wanna shell out $50 a breaker. I have been swapping out dual 20amp for dual 15amp as i find them for $15 on ebay. Will change out panel, but that's down the road. We just decided we are not gonna upgrade to 200amp as we have no need. So it's been moved up in date as cost went down to just a panel change. For $50 a breaker I can get gfci/afci breakers. On to do list. Gas water heater, furnace, eventually stove, and dryer so no need for a huge electrical panel.

 

[joecaption]

Where are you?
Most of what you have told us you have now would not be legal in the US.

 

[pomaikai]

US Texas, i am working on correcting alot of the wiring since I bought house. Biggest issue was 2 14ga wires coming out of a 40amp breaker. As if you could add the amperages of each circuit together(assuming screwed up 20a on a 14 GA) and just use that breaker. I swapped that the second I noticed. 40amp gone and replaced with dual 15s. That's a fire waiting to happen. Putting 35a on a single branch of the circuit with 14ga and it not blowing. I personally don't use anything under 12ga. PITA to work with compared to 14ga, but I like overkill. I found out when I realized they used stabs on outlets and the stabs won't take a 12ga, only 14ga.

I am working on moving it all up to code. Bathrooms had no GFCI, those have been added. As well as the patio outlet moved to gfci.

In the next couple months I will take out a permit, get a new 100amp panel and install all the proper breakers including afci for rooms.

We got this house for 75-80k under what it would appraise for today, needed a lot of work. It had lots of hacks. Was a rental house with a cheap ass landlord.