Electrical – Losing ceiling fans after the lightest thunderstorms. How to ascertain the cause

ceiling-fanelectrical

At my home after the lightest thunderstorms we end up losing ceiling fans – they fail to rotate. The fans' winding gets damaged despite power cuts enforced by the power supply company (they cut power during thunderstorms) and we turning off the mains. As a result, during every rainy season, we end up repairing all our fans multiple times.

We are often told by electricians that –

  1. This is common in RCC ceilings as the surge often travels through the reinforcement's iron rods and ends up making a contact with the hook that hangs the ceiling fans
  2. There could be some wiring issue

How can I troubleshoot this and ascertain the root cause?

Best Answer

It's an open secret, that No standards are followed in India, and none of the electrical or any other work is up to code.

I too had a similar problem in the apartment that I was renting in Bangalore. Every-time there was lighting and thunder, first the power used to fail, and some of the lights used to flicker, and couple of times the winding of my ceiling fans got burned, and had to be replaced.

I had a couple of electricians look at it, but they were of no help. That's when I decided to take things in my own hands, and investigate. What I found was horrible.

  • In several places, the switch was not on the live, but on the neutral. This meant that often the appliances were live, (had a potential of 220v) just the circuit was not complete.
  • The circuitry of the building was such, that there was a return current on the neutral, even when there was no electricity. This was probably due to wiring of two apartments sharing a neutral, and they having an inverter, or something.
  • The earthing was probably just the neutral, or the earthing plate was not properly installed.

I had to take the following steps:

  • Get a proper earthing plate installed, and connected.
  • Install a high quality electronic circuit-braker. I forget the exact details, but I think, it was dual pole & checked for the leakage current in the earthing.
  • Fix the wiring, to make sure all switches were on Live, and no appliance/connection was ever live with the switch turned off.
  • Have new wiring run to the fans, which included an Earth, which was connected to the hook that the fan was on, as well as the rod of the Fan.

After this, I never had any issues.

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