Loadingā¦
6
Serious question, my neighbor rewired his shed light and now my garage door opener clicks on its own
So my neighbor Dale decided to run power out to his shed off a line he tapped near our shared fence, and he did it with lamp cord and wire nuts just sitting in a coffee can. Three days later my garage door opener started clicking open by itself around 7pm, which is exactly when his shed light timer kicks on. I unplugged my opener for two nights and the clicking stopped, so I'm pretty sure his wiring is backfeeding into my line somehow. I don't want to be the guy who calls the city on a retiree, but I also don't want my door going up at random. Has anyone dealt with a neighbor's sketchy DIY power run messing with their own circuits, and how did you bring it up without a fight?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
craig.reese25d ago
Man, this is just the latest example of something I keep seeing everywhere: people treating electricity like it's a suggestion instead of a law of physics. You can't just splice into a line with lamp cord and a coffee can and expect the volts to stay in their lane, that's not how any of this works. His timer kicks on, the current finds a weird path back through your shared neutral or ground, and your opener's circuit board reads that little voltage blip as a signal to open. It's the same story as folks who daisy chain ten power strips or run a generator into a dryer outlet without a transfer switch, everything looks fine until one day the house is doing stuff on its own. Two nights of unplugging and the timing matching his timer is about as close to proof as you're gonna get without a meter. Go talk to Dale first, be cool about it, tell him what you found and that you're worried about his safety too, because a coffee can full of wire nuts is a fire waiting to happen. If he blows you off, then you call the city and let them be the bad guy, that's what they're there for.
5