Dan Kuechle wrote:
Hello all

I have a dedicated 20 amp circuit that feeds 4 outdoor recepticals
spaced around my yard. There is probably a total of 300 feet of 12
AWG Romax underground wire used, burried about a foot deep in our
(very) sandy soil. This setup has been working fine for years, until
the other day when the circuit breaker popped. We reset it, and
things were fine until the middle of the next night...I thought we
had a power failure... turns out the circuit breaker popped again,
along with the upline main breaker that has all the 110v stuff going
through it for the whole house. The only time I've ever seen this
upline breaker go was when we had a lightning strike a few years
back. Since then, the upline breaker has not popped again, but the
20 amp breaker pops about once every 24 hours. When the breaker is
reset, things appear normal. A clamp on AC ammeter shown 0 amps when
nothing is plugged in, and reads correctly (4 amp) when the normal
load is connected (a couple of pond pumps that run 24-7). I've
checkec the voltage at all the outlets with a volt meter and all
looks fine. I even swapped the circuit breaker with another thinking
maybe it was just a bad breaker.

Anyone got an idea of what could be going on? I'm stumped.

Thanks

Dan

I assume by Romax (sic) you mean NM / NMW non-metallic wire rated for
direct burial?

Is it a GFI breaker? It should be, if it feeds an outside circuit. The
breaker may be tripping because of a small current leak caused by
degraded or damaged undergroup wire. However, if you swapped it with a
non-GFI breaker (it sounds like you did) and still have the same
problem, then it may be something else.