When I am welding, the house lights are diming! Has anyone else experienced this? Should I be concerned about this?
I am using a 130 amp Mig.

Yes! if you are drawing enough current to visibly dim lighting then you need to check your incoming supply! First ensure all your connections in the consumer unit are good then get the electricity company to come and check their equipment. What is the rated current on the input side of the welder?

Caber

Try to get your current as close as possible to your fuse-box. And take an other group which not contains the lights.

See what happens then.

Think of electricity as water. Turning the garden hose on when it is getting water from the same point as the kitchen sink is going to cause problems.

Apparently your outlet for the welder is a ways downstream, away from the fusebox. It needs to be just as close to the fusebox as possible.

Could the socket its plugged into be a spur?

That definately wouldn't help!

When I fire up my welder the strip lights flicker off and on, and thats a fat wire straight from the consumer unit.

Just ignore it ! I think its not just the drain but also the back EMF from the windings in the welder spiking the supply.

I used to work for BT, we had a phone sysem near a saw mill that kept failing due to this.....

Regards Mark

it is probably not something to worry about. When a welder starts it creates a current draw much higher than its rating but quickly settles down. This is probably what is causing your lights to dim. My gargage is 30m away from the house supplyed by a 6mm 30Amp supply. Usually the lights are fine but in the winter when the tumble dryer is on, the kettle(prob), most of the house lighting etc etc the flourescent lighting flickers due to the starting draw on the welder.