My HT oven makes my lights flicker?

Chris Railey

Chris Railey

Well-Known Member
OK so I finally got to run my new to me HT oven (Evenheat KH418). I was tempering some blades and as the oven started to run its cycle my lights began to flicker. I work out of a garage shop so I checked inside too and the lights in there were flickering too. Not horribly, think more of a candle burning rather than the lights going on and off. Counting ramp time I ran it about 2 hours and 15 minutes, light flickered the whole time. The oven ran its cycle fine and appeared to operate normally so I have no reason to suspect there is a problem there. Nothing caught fire but I KNOW once my wife catches on she will freak out until I turn the oven off. My simple solution is to run it off of a generator. I have been eyeballing a small inverter generator for some time now to use in camping and stuff any way. My question is this, The site claims the oven runs on 120v 1560 watts at 13 amps. The generator has 1600 running watts. If I run nothing else should that generator be sufficient to run my oven for a few hours? I really want to buy the smaller generator because it will be easier to take camping and fishing.
 
You have a lot of LED lights?

I don't think a generator will deal with that loading and unloading real well. It's not a current issue, it's a voltage regulation issue.
 
Wow! Both the garage and house lights were flickering? My first question would be.... how many amps are running into your house? Next, how many amps are running to the garage? The standard on modern homes is 200 amp service.....but many older homes have less. The flickering in both the house and garage is what concerns me. That tells that the wiring and/or some component(s) in the system are not up to handling the amount of amps being pulled. That could be something as simple as a defective breaker, or a wiring issue. Either way, and whether you run the oven off the system or not, you need to get it checked/figured out!! If 13 amps is flickering lights throughout the system, there is a serious problem somewhere! Find/fix it before the whole place burns down!!

OK, My only real experience with generators was in the military, but for long duration running like you're talking about, we were required to have DOUBLE the capacity of what we were running with the generator(s) to avoid overloading them. So, if we needed 2000 watts, we had to use a generator that was capable of 4000 watts. "Long Duration" runs were anything longer then 4 hours.
 
LED's are stupid voltage sensitive. They are a DC light being tricked to run on AC. Some brands are better than others. Half my shop is LED and half fluorescent. Guess which half flickers?
 
Didn't consider the LED lights...... that was a good catch..... the ones I have in the shop sometime "flicker" when I plug in a high draw item like the heat gun. If it's just that, versus everything being "pulled down" or "dimmed", then it might not be so critical....but I'd still check just to be safe.
 
I’m no electrical expertBut since nothing else was flickering I bet you it’s the LEDs. We just got LEDs at church and have had nothing but problems with them so I think they’re very voltage sensitive.
 
Chris, you don't say if your panel is on fuses or breakers but adding that load might be creating an unbalanced load on your panel. you can try moving the circuit that feeds your oven outlet to another position in your panal, try switching it to the other busbar in the panel.
 
If it’s fuses and it’s not on a dedicated circuit I suspect the amperage is causing low voltage across all the circuits.
I wouldn’t think you would have a 200 amp panel with fuse protection, unless you have an upgraded main distribution panel with breakers that sub feeds the fused sub panel.
 
opaul said:
If it’s fuses and it’s not on a dedicated circuit I suspect the amperage is causing low voltage across all the circuits.
I wouldn’t think you would have a 200 amp panel with fuse protection, unless you have an upgraded main distribution panel with breakers that sub feeds the fused sub panel.
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The long story is that my F-I-L is an electrician/plumber with his own business. My wife has asked him previously to come put me in a breaker box with some dedicated circuits. He is a good man and the best F-I-L you could ask for but he runs his own business and since we are not really full paying customers we have to wait until he slacks up enough to have the time without hurting his business. I totally understand all of that but it literally could be months before that happens. My current solution is to get a generator to run the big tools, which I run one at the time and run the rest off of the shop outlets until he can make it happen. I found one that is an inverter generator and puts out 3500 running watts at 120 v so that is what almost 30 amps. It should handle 13 amps and 1560 watts fine for a few hours at a time. I am a multi use kind of guy so it will also function as back-up power for my home during outages and power to run my tent A/C on fishing/hunting trips. I have been meaning to get one any way and it will be cheaper than a divorce as my friend put it to me today.
 
Chris Railey said:
The long story is that my F-I-L is an electrician/plumber with his own business. My wife has asked him previously to come put me in a breaker box with some dedicated circuits. He is a good man and the best F-I-L you could ask for but he runs his own business and since we are not really full paying customers we have to wait until he slacks up enough to have the time without hurting his business. I totally understand all of that but it literally could be months before that happens. My current solution is to get a generator to run the big tools, which I run one at the time and run the rest off of the shop outlets until he can make it happen. I found one that is an inverter generator and puts out 3500 running watts at 120 v so that is what almost 30 amps. It should handle 13 amps and 1560 watts fine for a few hours at a time. I am a multi use kind of guy so it will also function as back-up power for my home during outages and power to run my tent A/C on fishing/hunting trips. I have been meaning to get one any way and it will be cheaper than a divorce as my friend put it to me today.
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A generator is always helpful to have. I've run our trailer A/C off of a Honda i2000 generator. So I would think the generator you are contemplating will do the job.

I would agree that the best long term solution though is a new breaker box.
 
Sean Jones said:
A generator is always helpful to have. I've run our trailer A/C off of a Honda i2000 generator. So I would think the generator you are contemplating will do the job.

I would agree that the best long term solution though is a new breaker box.
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The tool selection has actually grown to where that is a must now. I just have to be patient like I listed above.
 
Chris - are you saying "only" the LED lights flicker? Even with that I'm sorta concerned. Even though your F-I-L doesn't have time to replace the breaker box at this time you do NEED to let him know about the LED lights flickering. Perhaps he could do a voltage check and see just how much the voltage is dropping. There could be a neutral corroded in the meter base or fuse box that's causing problems. I had to rework the meter back in my S-I-L's house due to corroded neutral. Had to get the power company out to pull meter base.

Yes, the 3500 watt generator will work just fine. You'll notice it surging up 'n down as the oven cycles on 'n off. Just a thought, what type of controller do you have on the oven? Since most all controllers are actually a "computer", I'd seriously think about one of the inverter type generators that provide a true sine wave for power. The power is just so much cleaner for computers.

At least get the voltage in the house checked and see how much voltage drop is involved with oven cycling.
 
I called an electrician today a sort of friend of a friend. He is going to come give an estimate on putting a breaker box in my shop. Hopefully I can afford his work.
 
If you have a separate shop you could get the Electrician to install a riser and the power company to set a meter on your shop and the in coming service would be sized to handle the load.
As Ken stated - you might want to get him to check the grounding and neutral lugs/blocks in the meter base and power panel.
 
I have an attached garage shop. The meter is on the outside of my garage wall so hopefully it is an easy job to put in a box and maybe three circuits. I am not much of an electrician.
 
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