Find a real electrician. Not the hack that you had there first. He/she will need to start at the breaker/fuse panel to determine where the one hot leg connection was lost. What was the 'electrician' doing when the lights went out?

He was checking the torque on connections and making sure there was no corrosion on all the outlets. He was on the very last outlet which is outside and that was when the lights went out.. didnt know that the range was stopping the flow of electricity until i was done fiddling with the breakers and calling the electric company went to cook dinner that night and all the lights came on and the stove didnt heat up.

Why did you actually have that "electrician" there in the first place? Checking the torque on connections and for corrosion is not a routine thing unless there is a problem that would suggest that. And normally, the main place you worry about adequate torque is the main supply wires at the meter and the breaker box. When an electrician makes connections to things like breakers and receptacles, they don't typically check the torque...they just make sure the screws are tightened down adequately and if that is done competently if shouldn't have to be checked again under normal circumstances.

I have never heard of checking the torque and corrosion on receptacle connections unless something already quit working. Was this guy really an electrician, or was it some type of home inspection service?

Your house has 240 volt power in from the power company, which is split out into two 120 volt "legs" in the bus at your breaker box. All your 120 volt breakers connect to only one of the two 120 volt legs, but 240 volt circuits (like your range) connect to both legs. Everywhere that you have a 240 volt circuit, that device is connected to both legs. Many electric ranges are also wired in a dual mode to have a 120 volt circuit for the clock and timer.

Possible explanation - It sounds like one 120 volt leg has been disconnected in/near the breaker box, turning off that half of the house, but when you turn on the stove it is creating a cross-connect and allowing the 120 volts from the powered leg to feed back through the range to the unpowered 120 volt leg.

Important - Do not be tempted to leave the stove on to power to the other half of the house, because this could be very dangerous. You are running more power back through that range/stove plug than it was designed to handle and either the stove or the receptacle may heat up and melt something. If the stove is trying to run on only 120 volts it will also be drawing twice as much amperage.

A competent electrician should be able to troubleshoot this relatively quickly. Just go back though everything the other guy touched, and figure out what he screwed up during his "corrosion removal and torquing".

Bruce

The same guy was sent by the housing authority last year on a modernization project that included installing safety outlets, and had a problem with loose wiring in one of the other units so he was sent back to double check his work on 9 different homes. Now the housing authority is saying its homowner responsibility for maintenance, electrical wiring included, but it was their guy who created the situation and agreed to cover the bill. I talked to my uncle who has been a certified electrician for 20 years and he said the same thing, that one of the power supply wires are disconnected between the meter and spider box and that the range is creating a connection between the two halves of the house. He proceed to tell me not to touch anything else and wait until he gets here. So hopefully he'll have it fixed and we'll send the bill to the housing authority. Ill post an update soon if all goes well.

Thanks for the update. Good advice from bcarlson above and your uncle. Good luck. Please update afterwards.

"Possible explanation - It sounds like one 120 volt leg has been disconnected in/near the breaker box, turning off that half of the house, but when you turn on the stove it is creating a cross-connect and allowing the 120 volts from the powered leg to feed back through the range to the unpowered 120 volt leg."

It is not "allowing the 120 volts". It is creating a series circuit which significantly drops the voltage.

"if I switch one of the burners on, the lights turn on but they are dim, if i turn another burner on, the lights get brighter and the tv turns on, if i switch the oven on then it seems like i get full power to all the problem areas."

As you turn on more elements in the stove, you create more parallel paths for the electricity. This increases the voltage proportionately with every new path.

I would recommend for you to call a qualified electrician and not the guy who did this to you. There are so many things that do not add up here and are very serious. Have you smelled odors of burning wires when you are turning these stove knobs off and on and or hearing a cracking or popping noise? The utility meter wires are either copper or aluminum . If they are aluminum type wires a special paste called aluminum oxide paste needs applied at terminations. If this paste is not applied the aluminum wire will turn to powder like the corrosion on a car battery and arcing across the damaged section of wire and or stop the connection altogether. The electric stove should be on its own circuit breaker 2 pole 240 volts and should have nothing to do with 120 volt lights and 120 volt outlets. There definitely appears to be a backfeed issue going on. Electrical power if properly grounded with grounding rod or rods will always take the least resistance to ground thru these rods or rod in a fault. With all this dimming and brightening of lights and no grounding or tripping of breakers I would make sure that the grounding system is also correct on top of this backfeed issue. Good luck and let me know how this works out for you. www.dbelectric.us