Another photocell question

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Pat75

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Location
Maryland
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Electrician
So I'm replacing a pier panel at a residence. Nothing special, replace in kind. Original one is about 20 years old, rusted out. The homeowner brings out a brand new photocell and asks me to replace the switch for pagoda style lights which are mounted on the pilings. They are protected by a 15 amp gfci breaker which seems to be good. It doesn't trip while switch is operated AND doesn't trip if, with the switch removed, the line and load conductors are temporarily wire nutted together.
BUT as soon as the photocell is installed...connect the neutral to the cell..."click" it trips immediately....even without the load connected. Tried yet another photocell...same exact occurrence. Trips.
So, it trips ONLY when neutral is hooked up.
Operates totally fine with switch or nutted.
Tried multiple photocells, same trip happens.

I searched web and haven't found an answer.

Any idea if just isn't an application where a photocell and a gfi breaker aren't going to work?
 
It sounds like there's an internal connection between the neutral and the housing.

I would try connecting the PC temporarily with the housing isolated from ground.
 
I even tried with the all plastic PC hanging in free air. It trips the second the neutral is tied to cell.
Craziness.
Got to be honest though, I've never had an installation with a PC on a gfci breaker before. So I can't say whether this is common place or not
 
You replaced the switch that doesn't utilize a neutral conductor with a photo cell that does. Apparently neutral conductor at the switch location doesn't tie to the neutral of the GFCI protected circuit for some reason therefore the small amount of current the photocell uses is flowing outside the protected circuit.

If you cheated and bootlegged the neutral to the EGC because there was no neutral conductor there - that is the problem.
 
Kwired...You know what....I'm a dumba$$... I need to go back and check.....I may have tied the neutral from the PC to the neutral bar INSTEAD of the gfci breaker. I didn't even visualize that until you posted your thoughts!
 
If you don't solve this, I would remove the GFCI breaker and replace it with a regular breaker. Lights don't require GFCI anyway. If there is a receptacle on the circuit just put in a GFCI receptacle.
 
Pat75 said:
Kwired...You know what....I'm a dumba$$... I need to go back and check.....I may have tied the neutral from the PC to the neutral bar INSTEAD of the gfci breaker. I didn't even visualize that until you posted your thoughts!
Click to expand...
Was the neutral already there? Connecting the photocell to it shouldn't change anything. But if you pulled a neutral to it and didn't connect it to that circuit you found your problem.
 
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