Electrical ? 1.8V from a wall socket!

[Tom Jones III]

I was helping a friend install wood floors in his 20 yr old house when his SWMBO said the washing machine was not working. We looked at it and determined that the machine worked fine when plugged in elsewhere but nothing worked on that wall socket. I checked it with a multimeter and the voltage was roughly 1.8V. Yes, I was using the multimeter correctly because I checked a different outlet and got 118V. I asked him to turn off the breaker and it went down to 0.5V.

Any ideas on what is wrong? I'm wondering if the circuit breaker is bad. The house has had a room added to it but the previous owner did not add any new electrical circuits, they just overloaded the circuits that were already installed. I've never seen this style of breakers, each breaker has 2 switches, almost like each one is 2 breakers or functions for 2 circuits. He mentioned that breakers are always tripping.

-- Thanks Steve. I did go ahead and replace the receptacle, I happened to have one handy and the first thing I thought of was a loose wire or burned out receptacle. Replacing the receptacle changed nothing.

[Steve Clardy]

The breakers that have two handles, are a way to increase the number of breakers when the box is full and another circuit is needed.
Not sure of the other problem. Possibly a loose wire on the receptacle

[Joe Pelonio]

The breakers that have two handles, are a way to increase the number of breakers when the box is full and another circuit is needed.
Not sure of the other problem. Possibly a loose wire on the receptacle

Yes, you could be getting a few volts jumping across, maybe the curled end of a wire broke off where screwed on to the outlet.

[Tyler Howell]

Breakers are a good place to start.
Also neutral at the distribution panel may be loose.
How about other ckts in the house.
Many times one phase can go south.
If all else is good you will have to start tracing the path through the house.
Found a loose neutral in the kitchen causing a problem in a bedroom on another floor.

[Ryan Myers]

Loose nuetrals will usually show 50-90V from line to nuetral. Check the nuetral to ground for continuity. If that is good then you have a solid connection from the receptacle to the panel. Another way to check for proper nuetral connection is to run an extension cord from a known good working receptacle and check continuity from nuetral of bad receptacle to nuetral of extension cord.

Sounds like you have a loose connection somewhere on the hot. Receptacles that have been backwired (where wire pushes in rather than attached on the screw) tend to have lots of problems. If the circuit runs through another receptacle before ending at the washer this could be the problem. Or a loose splice in j-box is the likely culprit.

Also check for output on the breaker as they can sometimes fail, although unusual.

It is typical on a dead circuit to show a few volts as it comes from being induced voltage which is picked up from wires running next to other live wires. Not uncommon to see as much as 10V.

[Kyle Kraft]

Tom,

I concur with Ryan on the induced voltage issue. It shows up on a meter, but doesn't hurt......much.

[Russ Filtz]

After fiddling with the wires, I would also look at replacing the outlet itself, or the breaker if it's a dedicated circuit.