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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