First of all, I need to know if this is a fire hazard, how it happened, and how to fix it:A couple of hours ago, a wall socket in the kitchen with an air-freshener plugged into it suddenly made a popping sound. My b/f went in there to see where the sound had come from. It was that wall socket. It had started to make a loud buzzing sound. He pulled the air-freshener from the plug and the sound stopped, but most of the lights in the apartment went out, also, my computer, the refrigerator, the A/C, only a few sockets were left working.Then, by some fluke, he asked me as I was standing in the kitchen if the stove was on. It wasn't, but I started to turn on one of the burners. As I did so, all the lights, my compurter, the A/C, etc all came back on! I turned the burner back off and everything stayed on! This is true and very strange and frightening, as we were afraid of an electrical fire from wiring gone haywire or something.
Do you have a fuse box or breaker box in your apartment? If you do your boyfriend was playing games with you and either replaced the fuse or reset the breaker. Is the air freshener one of those that sprays into the air? Do you have a fan running that faces the outlet so that the moisture could get in the outlet? If you do that's most likely the cause of the sparking. If not, call an electrician to take a look at the outlet. It may need to be replaced.
If you have an electric stove, that may be the source of the problem, if it is gas, then there is no connection. I would have an electrician check things out. This is a potential fire hazard.
Your apartment may only have two fuses or breakers try resetting the breaker or looking for a blown fuse. If you can't find one;Call an electrician. This not necessarily a fire hazard, but these things are all related! 110-220v wiring has two phases the wiring has 3 wires red black and white. red-white is 117 black-white is 117 black to red is230 The initial problem has blown all the circuits in your house that are on one PHASE of your electrical feed. You have an electric stove which uses both phases. When you turn on the stove, which ever element connects the phases. You may find that the lights are dimmer due to the element's resistance.
It sounds like there is a broken neutral wire in your fuse/breaker box. The stove wiring is a 220 volt service that comes from the breaker box. It is protected by 2 breakers, assuming of course that your apartment is new enough to be using circuit breakers as opposed to fuses. The wall outlet is in a different circuit than what the stove power is, or at least it should be. The buzzing noise was from arcing in the outlet. This generally means that either the appliance plug, or the appliance is bad in some way, or the outlet is bad. Either way, it is bad news, yes, it is a fire hazard, and does need to be repaired as soon as possible. ALL of the grounds and neutral wires in the apartment need to be checked for proper connection, and continuity back to the breaker box. I suspect that turning on the stove put enough of a surge in the right place to correct the bad ground condition, for now. Don't rely on that though, get it fixed.
