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Nullus Anxietas |
Got some outside floods on a GFCI breaker. (One light is half-way across the yard, with the bury shallow enough code requires it.) Two switches. Three lights on one. One on the other. Come spring the GFCI got to tripping whenever there was a good rain. Isolated the problem to one of the two older floods (by process of disconnecting circuits and waiting for rain). Replaced it. Problem appeared solved... until it wasn't. But now the verkakte thing was tripping without it having rained. Then I discovered it was tripping with both switches off! Off with the panel cover. Assuming it was bad: Pulled the breaker. To be certain: Measured resistance and continuity between Hot/Neutral, Hot/Ground and Neutral/Ground. As expected: Between Hot/Neutral: Open circuit unless a switch was on. What was unexpected was measuring ~32k ohms (and floating around) between neutral and ground. Light in the front is a God-knows-how-old Heath/Zenith halogen motion. All three in the back are new RAB LED motions. I really don't want to be running around pulling those fixtures apart, especially in this heat. I'm hoping somebody's going to tell me there's something in those RAB LED fixtures that's causing this and it's normal. (E.g.: Static electricity drain?) (I measured between neutral and ground in the Heath/Zenith motion I decommissioned, and it was open.) "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | ||
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Sound and Fury |
Are you measuring with the neutral and ground disconnected at the panel? They should be bonded at the panel, and you should have 0 volts between them. If you're measuring from the panel with the wires disconnected, then it sounds like you might have a high-impedance short circuit. Is there a photo eye in any of the fixtures? "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here." -- Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, Jan. 11, 1989 Si vis pacem para bellum There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Feeding Trolls Since 1995 | |||
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| Member |
Spider webs in one of the fixtures. They don't last long between hot and ground, but they can keep between neutral and ground and drive the GFCI nuts. | |||
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| Nullus Anxietas |
Well, with neutral disconnected. I didn't bother tracking-down and disconnecting the ground wire. It would've made little sense to check resistance between neutral and ground with them both still connected to the neutral bus 
That's not how a GFCI breaker works. Neutral (from the load) goes to the breaker, the breaker has a wire that goes to the neutral bus.
I believe code says less than 0.7VAC.
At 23k ohms: Yeah, pretty high-impedance.
They're all motion-sensing lights, but, as I said: Their wall switches were off, so... Besides: Measurement was between neutral and ground. So it's kind of weird.
Yeah... that seems exceedingly unlikely. I installed/wired those fixtures. All four of them. There's absolutely no way there's anything like that on the wiring side, because there's absolutely no way there's any exposed neutral copper.
Unless neutral is faulty I'm having a hard time seeing how that could be. Anyway... add'l info: So I thought "Hmmm... Why don't I just put that breaker back in, hook up its neutral, and see what happens?" Went back about an hour later and, sure enough: Tripped. So the breaker is definitely defective. I'm glad that mystery is solved, but, day-um, those GFCI breakers are expensive  "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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His Royal Hiney |
Might hold off until Skins show up. You have a GFCI breaker in the breaker panel? I don't know if the problem I had was similar to yours. I had an inside GFCI outlet in the kitchen powering two outlets in the backyard. Same thing, GFCI kept breaking. It started during the rainy season then even when it's not raining. I traced it to a pigtail connector. I replaced it with a newer one and wrapped it insulation so it didn't get wet. That fixed it for me. "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946. | |||
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Ammoholic |
How did you come to this conclusion? Did problem to away with new breaker? Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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Member |
If all you have are floods running off that circuit, why would it need to be GFI? My Native American Name: "Runs with Scissors" | |||
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| Ammoholic |
Usually because if you GFI protect the lines burial depth is 12" vs 18". In rocky or clay rich soils it could save hundreds of dollars in trenching, especially if long runs. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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| Nullus Anxietas |
With the breaker installed in the panel and neither hot nor neutral connected to it, just its own neutral to the neutral bus: It tripped. Since what it's supposed to do is detect ground fault current flow, and there could not possibly have been any current flow, I came to the conclusion it's defective
Answered in the very first post and expanded-upon by Skins. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| Ignored facts still exist |
With some of the older GFCI's, a strong radio transmitter can contribute to the problem, and make it trip more often. Not likely your issue, but I thought I'd bring it up just in case you live near some HAM station or something.
The rain correlation seems strange based on this. . | |||
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| Nullus Anxietas |
I think it's simply coincidence. I think the GFCI had been working properly, then, several days after I replaced the offending fixture, it failed. Perhaps related to it becoming bloody hot around these here? That's my working hypothesis, anyway. The way I isolated the original problem was by pruning lights from the circuit by disconnecting their hots, up in a J-box, one-by-one, until the problem stopped. I made certain it had stopped. Replaced the fixture. Had a good downpour shortly thereafter. Stayed fixed. Then the problem came back. Only now, I eventually discovered, it'd eventually trip, rain or no rain--even when all the lights were switched off. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| Member |
Actually a Gfci detects a differential between the common and the hot wire. If the differential is higher than I believe 9ma, then it trips. The differential would be caused by a ground typically. NRA Life Endowment member Tri-State Gun collectors Life Member | |||
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| Ammoholic |
It will also trip with ground fault and no load present. ##### When trying to isolate the problem you need to disconnect both hot and neutral ensigmatic. Hopefully it was just the breaker, you'll know for sure in a week or two. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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| Nullus Anxietas |
I did. I left the GFCI breaker's neutral connection to the bus connected, but the load's hot and neutral were not.
I'm fairly confident it was. The new breaker's in. Interestingly: An AFCI/GFCI breaker was $5 less than a GFCI-only breaker, so that's what I put in. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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