Why would lights and TV come on without anyone flipping the switch?

Answer 1

Having the surge protector should not affect individual circuits. It sounds more like to me you have a bad neutral somewhere. By that I mean a wire is loose. So say the light switch or TV is left on and the bad connection is currently open, neither work. So the wind or gremlins in your house do their work and the next thing you know their on because the circuit is now making through this poor connection. If this is the case, this is a bad deal ok. You should have this looked at by a qualified electrician. Now, there is something else it could be, it's called a switch feeder. It could be that somewhere else one of the kids turned on a light switch and poof, other stuff turns on. If this is the case, it's simply a matter of moving a wire from the switched side of the offending switch to the fed side. You can test this by making sure the light you want to come on is in the on position and then walking around the adjacent rooms and flicking on switches. You know, if the boys loosed some neutrals at your panel board when they were trying to find a spot for their surge protector, that would be the bad neutral I was talking about. If you just recently had it done, call them back and tell them what's going on. It will be as simple as removing the panel cover, re-tightening the screws on all the whites. You can do it yourself if you're brave. Just turn off the main and carefully tighten only the screws on the neutral/white bar. There are still places in a de-energized panel that can beat up on you, becareful and good luck.

Andy

AnswerWe had a similar problem several years ago. When we called an electrician to trouble shoot for us we found out that some of our aged "Aluminum wiring" was loose at the panel box internal connections.Some of the connections were dark with evidence of melting & burning. Very Dangerous !! Apparently when aluminum heats up it will shut-off the power, after it cools the power is restored..therefore some lights an the TV were turning off & on on their own.. A sign that there was trouble brewing. We had the electrical panel upgraded & replaced. Eventually over the past few years, we had all the aluminum removed and replaced with copper wiring. No further problems.