replying to RB, Sinbad wrote:
RB wrote:

I'd buy a bucket of GFI outlets and place one at each location where
needed and remove the GFCI breaker. Then when any GFI outlet trips you
know which one it is and can better address the source of the problem.
RB



In my experience, and in other threads, I learned that you don't want to
put more than one GFI breaker/outlet on a circuit. They interfere with
each other.

That said, I am having a similar issue with a string of outdoor lights I
installed up my driveway. I had a guy with a ditch witch come and bury
segments of outdoor 12 ga wire (the gray stuff that is supposedly ok to
bury without a conduit) from lamp post to lamp post. 7 posts in all. He
actually put the wire into that 1" black plastic tubing for further
protection.

I have them all connected to a GFI outlet on my front porch.

In dry weather it all works fine. But after a heavy rain, the GFI trips,
sometimes immediately, sometimes after a delay of seconds or minutes.

So -- typical water problem somewhere. I finally isolated it to one
segment of buried wire, between posts 3 and 4.
Disconnect the wire completely at post 4 (hot, neutral, and ground), and
it still trips the GFI.
Disconnect the wire compoletely at post 3, and the GFI no longer trips.

So apparently there is a leak somewhere in the underground wire run
between 3 and 4. I suppose it's possible that the ditch witch guy somehow
skinned some insulation off the hot wire, and when it gets wet, it
conducts enough to earth to trip the GFI.

This is a bummer, because I don't know if I can pull the bad wire out and
pull a good one in behind it or not. Maybe I'll just run that segment
through some trees and call it good. :-)

Sinbad

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"Sinbad" wrote in
message roups.com...
replying to RB, Sinbad wrote:
RB wrote:

I'd buy a bucket of GFI outlets and place one at each location where
needed and remove the GFCI breaker. Then when any GFI outlet trips you
know which one it is and can better address the source of the problem.
RB



In my experience, and in other threads, I learned that you don't want to
put more than one GFI breaker/outlet on a circuit. They interfere with
each other.

That said, I am having a similar issue with a string of outdoor lights I
installed up my driveway. I had a guy with a ditch witch come and bury
segments of outdoor 12 ga wire (the gray stuff that is supposedly ok to
bury without a conduit) from lamp post to lamp post. 7 posts in all. He
actually put the wire into that 1" black plastic tubing for further
protection.

I have them all connected to a GFI outlet on my front porch.

In dry weather it all works fine. But after a heavy rain, the GFI trips,
sometimes immediately, sometimes after a delay of seconds or minutes.

So -- typical water problem somewhere. I finally isolated it to one
segment of buried wire, between posts 3 and 4. Disconnect the wire
completely at post 4 (hot, neutral, and ground), and
it still trips the GFI.
Disconnect the wire compoletely at post 3, and the GFI no longer trips.

So apparently there is a leak somewhere in the underground wire run
between 3 and 4. I suppose it's possible that the ditch witch guy somehow
skinned some insulation off the hot wire, and when it gets wet, it
conducts enough to earth to trip the GFI.
This is a bummer, because I don't know if I can pull the bad wire out and
pull a good one in behind it or not. Maybe I'll just run that segment
through some trees and call it good. :-)

Could be some water getting into lamp #3. If it is the cable pull it out of
the tube and replace it. Otherwise what was the point in putting it into the
tube.

replying to EXT , Sinbad wrote:
noemail wrote:

"Sinbad" wrote in
message roups.com...
Could be some water getting into lamp #3. If it is the cable pull it out
of
the tube and replace it. Otherwise what was the point in putting it into
the

tube.


Yeah, no kidding -- the whole point of putting it into a tube is to
protect it. But not necessarily from water. More from digging. All the
tubes are buried under the ground, so water can easily get into them. The
gray outdoor cable itself is meant to be buried or just be outside, with
no further protection. So it must be a bare spot in the hot line.

If I can even get the wire out of the tube, I'll inspect it, but I doubt I
can pull it out. It's 50 feet long with curves along the way, and it's 12
ga. If I can easily pull it then I will just to see what happened to it,
but otherwise I'll just do another run, up in the trees or something.

It's not the lamp -- I disconnected that.

Always something, eh?

Thanks for the reply.

Cheers,
Sinbad

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On Monday, November 3, 2014 3:44:05 PM UTC-5, Sinbad wrote:
replying to RB, Sinbad wrote:
RB wrote:

I'd buy a bucket of GFI outlets and place one at each location where
needed and remove the GFCI breaker. Then when any GFI outlet trips you
know which one it is and can better address the source of the problem.
RB



In my experience, and in other threads, I learned that you don't want to
put more than one GFI breaker/outlet on a circuit. They interfere with
each other.

That said, I am having a similar issue with a string of outdoor lights I
installed up my driveway. I had a guy with a ditch witch come and bury
segments of outdoor 12 ga wire (the gray stuff that is supposedly ok to
bury without a conduit) from lamp post to lamp post. 7 posts in all. He
actually put the wire into that 1" black plastic tubing for further
protection.

I have them all connected to a GFI outlet on my front porch.

In dry weather it all works fine. But after a heavy rain, the GFI trips,
sometimes immediately, sometimes after a delay of seconds or minutes.

So -- typical water problem somewhere. I finally isolated it to one
segment of buried wire, between posts 3 and 4.
Disconnect the wire completely at post 4 (hot, neutral, and ground), and
it still trips the GFI.
Disconnect the wire compoletely at post 3, and the GFI no longer trips.

So apparently there is a leak somewhere in the underground wire run
between 3 and 4. I suppose it's possible that the ditch witch guy somehow
skinned some insulation off the hot wire, and when it gets wet, it
conducts enough to earth to trip the GFI.


It doesn't have to be the hot. If the neutral is making contact with ground
that will also trip it.

replying to trader_4 , Sinbad wrote:
trader4 wrote:

It doesn't have to be the hot. If the neutral is making contact with
ground
that will also trip it.


Good point! I did not think of that. Should have though, because the
GFCI compares what goes out the hot line with what comes back in the
neutral, and when they don't match, then it disconnects, right? So
anywhere it leaks to ground will trip it.



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replying to gfretwell , Sinbad wrote:
gfretwell wrote:

On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 17:44:02 +0000, Sinbad
Most of the time this ends up being water in a box somewhere.
I start by splitting the circuit in half. Pick a box in the middle of
the run, remove the device and terminate the wire there with wire
nuts, being sure the conductors are not touching the box.
Let it run that way for a while and see if you still trip.
Then work in the direction you have identified as the problem.
When you are putting boxes back together, it helps to point all wire
nuts up and keep them toward the top of the box.


I did exactly that with several boxes. Only a couple had wire nuts
pointing down, so I fixed them. Also used silicone sealant to seal around
the gray conduit where it entered the top of any boxes.

Good idea about how to find the culprit -- start at the halfway point.
Then depending on the result, go to halfway along one of the two legs, and
keep doing that until you find it. In computer jargon it's called the
binary search method, and is one of the fastest ways to find something.
There is a game that works the same way -- have someone think of a number
between 1 and 100, then tell you if your guess is low or high. Using the
binary technique you can always guess the number in about 7 tries.

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