One Outlet Low Voltage

[cooldan1]

Hoping for advice that isn't "check each outlet" but if need be, I will...

Bought a house a few years back (1960's build). Home inspector advised all outlets worked fine after testing each one. Randomly, one decided to stop working. I recently started replacing outlets in the house and figured I'd do this one too since maybe it was just a bad old outlet. I swapped it, and it too wouldn't work. I took a multimeter to it, and found that the hot-neutral was only reading 90-100v (analog, hard to tell exactly). I pulled the outlet out, and tested while it was plugged in:
Hot-neutral: 100v~
Hot-ground: 120v
Ground-neutral: 20v~
I read that I should be getting 118~ for hot and maybe 2~ for neutral. So I know something is wrong. The outlet is wired with 3 wires coming in (appear to be smaller wires) and 2 going out (thicker wires like the rest of the house has)(somewhere). Ground, hot, and neutral coming from above into the box, and a hot/neutral going out (down)(somewhere). To see if I can tell where it's going, I undid the wiring from the outlet itself and left them bare. The tests were rather interesting...
Hot-in to neutral-in: 0v
Hot-in to neutral-out: 120v
Hot-in to ground-in: 120v
Hot-out to anything: 0v
Neutral-in to ground-in: 1v~
Neutral-in to Hot-out: 0v
Neutral-out to ground: 1v~
The 2 out wires, while disconnected, don't seem to go to anything. I turned on all lights, checked all outlets in the next rooms, and nothing seems to be affected by it not being connected.
Question:
1. Where are these 2 out wires going? What could they possibly be used for?
Moving on, I thought "well, hot-in to ground-in is good, hot-in to neutral-out is good... by why? oh well... let's put just those in the outlet and see what happens"
I did, and hot to neutral now reads 120v, however I plugged in a small lamp to test, and then read the other outlet, and was noticing it was dropping the voltage, over and over and over. It reads 120v fine with nothing plugged in (thought I had it!) but then plugging something in is causing it to drop it's voltage down to nothing then jumps back up and goes down again and again.
I'm at a loss and am not sure what would have caused this in the first place.
Thoughts? Advice? Could it be a light switch that I replaced vs another outlet somewhere?
This will not be easy to track down because the one breaker I flip for this outlet kills 4 rooms... that's a lot of switches/outlets to remove and check while your 2 year old wants to play with you and your "toys"...
Thanks!

 

[freddo]

The neutral is missing on the incoming cable. You need to find the other end of that and check there, probably a loose connection at a previous outlet, or perhaps a joint in the cable.

 

[ktnwin]

This outlet appears to be the last one in the stream that is fed by one circuit breaker. That is why when you disconnect all the wires in this outlet box, everything else still work (make sense to me). The hot and neutral going out (down) could be for something that is not used. I would leave them un-connected. Only connect the 3 in wires (hot, neutral and ground) to the receptacle, then check to see if the issue persists.

freddo is also correct when saying neutral-in missing as "Hot-in to neutral-in: 0v". I like to add: check the outlet immediately upstream (which works) to see if the neutral from this outlet is properly connected to its neutral out. Could be the one on the right or the left of this outlet.

 

[Megawatt]

Hoping for advice that isn't "check each outlet" but if need be, I will...

Bought a house a few years back (1960's build). Home inspector advised all outlets worked fine after testing each one. Randomly, one decided to stop working. I recently started replacing outlets in the house and figured I'd do this one too since maybe it was just a bad old outlet. I swapped it, and it too wouldn't work. I took a multimeter to it, and found that the hot-neutral was only reading 90-100v (analog, hard to tell exactly). I pulled the outlet out, and tested while it was plugged in:
Hot-neutral: 100v~
Hot-ground: 120v
Ground-neutral: 20v~
I read that I should be getting 118~ for hot and maybe 2~ for neutral. So I know something is wrong. The outlet is wired with 3 wires coming in (appear to be smaller wires) and 2 going out (thicker wires like the rest of the house has)(somewhere). Ground, hot, and neutral coming from above into the box, and a hot/neutral going out (down)(somewhere). To see if I can tell where it's going, I undid the wiring from the outlet itself and left them bare. The tests were rather interesting...
Hot-in to neutral-in: 0v
Hot-in to neutral-out: 120v
Hot-in to ground-in: 120v
Hot-out to anything: 0v
Neutral-in to ground-in: 1v~
Neutral-in to Hot-out: 0v
Neutral-out to ground: 1v~
The 2 out wires, while disconnected, don't seem to go to anything. I turned on all lights, checked all outlets in the next rooms, and nothing seems to be affected by it not being connected.
Question:
1. Where are these 2 out wires going? What could they possibly be used for?
Moving on, I thought "well, hot-in to ground-in is good, hot-in to neutral-out is good... by why? oh well... let's put just those in the outlet and see what happens"
I did, and hot to neutral now reads 120v, however I plugged in a small lamp to test, and then read the other outlet, and was noticing it was dropping the voltage, over and over and over. It reads 120v fine with nothing plugged in (thought I had it!) but then plugging something in is causing it to drop it's voltage down to nothing then jumps back up and goes down again and again.
I'm at a loss and am not sure what would have caused this in the first place.
Thoughts? Advice? Could it be a light switch that I replaced vs another outlet somewhere?
This will not be easy to track down because the one breaker I flip for this outlet kills 4 rooms... that's a lot of switches/outlets to remove and check while your 2 year old wants to play with you and your "toys"...
Thanks!

cooldan1 welcome to the forum and you have a loose connection on your neutral. If that receptacle hasn’t worked in a while and your voltage readings are what you stated check your neutrals in the wire nut. When you pull out the wiring to change a receptacle and you get it all hooked up and you go and have to push the wiring back into the box to screw the receptacle in box, if the wires are not tightly twisted in the wire nut and taped one of them will slide down and not make a good connection. You have a loose neutral somewhere.

 

[freddo]

Hopefully the op managed to sort the problem at some point over the last 9 months.

 

[Megawatt]

Hopefully the op managed to sort the problem at some point over the last 9 months.

DUHH I’m terrible about being in a hurry and not looking at the date ?

 

[ktnwin]

I think even if the reply, advise comes very late, it could still be helpful to others to happen to have similar problem. I am having one, 40 Volts at outlet, still trying to figure out what's wrong.

 

[Megawatt]

I think even if the reply, advise comes very late, it could still be helpful to others to happen to have similar problem. I am having one, 40 Volts at outlet, still trying to figure out what's wrong.

My friend I promise you that somewhere on that particular circuit has a loose neutral. Cut off the breaker to that circuit and start opening any receptacles, and lights thats on that circuit. Good luck and sorry about the late reply. These guys on this forum like picking on me ??

 

[ktnwin]

My friend I promise you that somewhere on that particular circuit has a loose neutral. Cut off the breaker to that circuit and start opening any receptacles, and lights thats on that circuit. Good luck and sorry about the late reply. These guys on this forum like picking on me ??

Megawatt, I have no intention to pick on anyone here as I need their advises, including yours of course.
I am member of a few other forums and I learned a lot, got a lot of help, help others whenever I could.
LOOSE NEUTRAL is a good suggestion, I will keep an eye on this while diagnosing my current issue. That thread was just updated with wiring diagrams for clarity.

 

[Megawatt]

Megawatt, I have no intention to pick on anyone here as I need their advises, including yours of course.
I am member of a few other forums and I learned a lot, got a lot of help, help others whenever I could.
LOOSE NEUTRAL is a good suggestion, I will keep an eye on this while diagnosing my current issue. That thread was just updated with wiring diagrams for clarity.

I know this is going to sound crazy but tie your ground wire with your neutrals and I bet you it starts working which proof that you have a loose neutral

 

[Lucien Nunes]

Go look at his other thread @Megawatt. One outlet on the circuit is using the EGC as a neutral because it has been added on to a switch leg that has no neutral. The ground is broken somewhere near the panel, so the other outlet / fixture grounds are being pulled up towards hot by anything plugged into the bad outlet.