wall power outlet making " cracking" sounds.

i just recently built an aquarium light using two strips of LED lights, i plugged it in the wall outlet near my bed and fire it up, but the wall power outlet in the bathroom start making cracking noise whenever the light is turned on, i believe those two power outlet are connected, tried the outlet in the living room and it was fine. what’s happening?

If I was in your position, I would definetly replace the outlet, maybe you have a small electrical short…

before i built the light, the original one was working fine. i thought it has to do with the light that i did. no? everything works fine and no cracking sounds beside the light is turned on.

Sounds like the outlet lost it's spring tension causing resistance and arcing. Like Alex said, replace it. Make sure the screws are tight when you install the new one. In any case, I wouldn't take any chances. It can end up being fire hazard..

Yeah…when you hear the crackling like that…there is a high resistance short…as atbglenn said the wires on the screws may be loose or corroded…cut the power to the plug, pull the plug and make sure they are clean and tight

thank you guys, let me shut down the power and open it up to check.

When I bought my house 15 years ago, I changed every outlet. You would not believe how many lose connections I found. I'm surprised the house didn't burn down...Scary shit!

Also get one of those plug-in outlet checkers. A goodly (actually badly) number of outlets in my house had hot and neutral wires reversed, missing grounds, etc.

> get one of those plug-in outlet checkers …. hot and neutral wires reversed, missing grounds, etc.

!!! YES

ALSO, you might have aluminum wiring, which is a big problem (used for a few years, now I think banned)
You have to look beyond the electrical box.

I was warned that some contractors used the cheap aluminum wire in the walls and spliced a short bit of proper copper wire in to enter the boxes and receptacles.

Copper and aluminum expand and contract differently when current flows through them warming them up, so connections come loose and short circuits slowly develop.

I can’t begin to list the range of possible faults, but if you haven’t opened the outlet yet, I suggest you check every wire with a DMM to make sure it isn’t hot. I’ve found boxes that have 2 different circuits, so shutting off one breaker isn’t always the solution.

Keep us posted.

> check every wire

Confirming that. I used to live in a 100 year old building that had been wired with fuses on both the hot and the neutral.
When the neutral fuse blew, all the lights went out — except for a few tiny faint little red and green equipment LEDs that were leaking current to the ground wire.

I checked. All the receptacles still had 110v hot, just waiting for some fool to touch a wire while also touching a radiator pipe ….

so i’ve checked and everything seems to be intact and in excellent condition, the power supply that i was using for the LED strip was 19V 1.58A, which was previously a Laptop Charger, i just recently got a 12V 2A power supply from ebay, replace the power supply and voila the noise disappear, but i think the new power supply got burned or something, the LED stop running after 3 mins of continuously running. I thought it was the LEDs but i changed it back to the other supply and it lit up. man, I thought these were simple Positive to Positive, Neg to Neg kind of thing. but i guess i need to take a class. So do you think the crackling noise was dude the wrong power supply?

Is the outlet in the bathroom a “GFCI” outlet ?
( Ground fault Circuit Interrupter ) if it is, and if the bedroom outlet is connected to the GFCI on the protected hot leads, is there a possiblility that the aquarium lighting has a “wet short” ( meaning not as complete short circuit, but a possible parasitic resistance from the hot lead to a ground) which will cause some GFCI protected outlets to buzz or make intermittent noises and not entirely trip the built-in breaker.
You could try having the connections to all the outlets and wires checked to make sure its safe and connected properly, then try plugin in a regular lamp or other load to the bedroom plug to see if the noise is still there. ( if the noise is only there when using the aquarium lights then there is likely a wet short in it somewhere.