GFCI question

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elecmen

Senior Member
Location
NH
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Electrician
This is the problem. Pump house has receptacles installed with GFCI protection. The lights are also protected by and on the same circuit. It is very damp in the pump house and the GFCI keeps on tripping every couple of days. I tried another GFCI receptacle and the same thing. I am thinking its to damp and moisture is whats causing it to trip. Does anyone have a solution to this? I read some where that there is a 30 milliamp trip GFCI. This breaker is for utilization equipment. Would receptacles apply to this? Any thoughts? Thanks
 
elecmen said:
This is the problem. Pump house has receptacles installed with GFCI protection. The lights are also protected by and on the same circuit. It is very damp in the pump house and the GFCI keeps on tripping every couple of days. I tried another GFCI receptacle and the same thing. I am thinking its to damp and moisture is whats causing it to trip. Does anyone have a solution to this? I read some where that there is a 30 milliamp trip GFCI. This breaker is for utilization equipment. Would receptacles apply to this? Any thoughts? Thanks
Click to expand...

Sounds like the GFI is working perfectly. Maybe you should just remove the GFI's so some one gets hurt or killed.
No, maybe lights that are water tight would make more sense, because that is the problem not the GFI.:grin:
 
Well, seems You need to add Sand or Crush and Run to floor if you can...

Tell the owner to get some Air circulating in there.

You might be able to pressurize the panel with one of those devices that do...

It'd be a little work but there is a lot more they could do before worrying about a pressured line for the panel...
 
Is the panel in the pump room ? If so give the light a dedicated gfci breaker. Far better to have it trip than kill. 30 mil amp will not save lives. There is moisture and you need to used WP boxes. The light might not be required to be gfi protected but it is added safety
 
Jim your right, I dropped a whole line of an FX box from my remarks, due to it being a GFI not a GFCI, if they can seal the box and let that heat itself pulse (radiate) verses being a moisture draw more power to them.
 
I believe the GFCI devices that you speak of trips at 5 milliamps, or a range of 4 to 6 milliamps. The moisture is more than likely the problem and will be a problem till this is corrected.
 
Why are the lights protected by the GFCI receptacles??

We've had a lot of posts about fluorescent lights tripping GFCI receptacles when the lights are turned on or off.

I would suggest removing the lights from the GFCI receptacles, and use a GFCI receptacle for each protected receptacle.

If you really want or need GFCI protection for the lights, at least put them on a separate GFCI. That way, you will at least be able to find out for sure if its the pumps or lights causing problems.

Steve
 
steve66 said:
Why are the lights protected by the GFCI receptacles??

We've had a lot of posts about fluorescent lights tripping GFCI receptacles when the lights are turned on or off.

I would suggest removing the lights from the GFCI receptacles, and use a GFCI receptacle for each protected receptacle.

If you really want or need GFCI protection for the lights, at least put them on a separate GFCI. That way, you will at least be able to find out for sure if its the pumps or lights causing problems.

Steve
Click to expand...

I would agree that normally GFCI protection is not provided for fixed lighting. And that would be ok here to, except that it is likely that the lighting equipment does have a ground fault that may not have otherwise been found (in time).

I would agree to run a separate GFCI circuit for the fixtures, then replace them as needed.
 
If the problem is moisture then keeping the pump room about 2 or 3 degrees warmer than the outside temperature should solve the problem.

You might want to elevate the temperature much more for a few days to drive out the moisture everything has soaked up so far.
 
SG-1 said:
If the problem is moisture then keeping the pump room about 2 or 3 degrees warmer than the outside temperature should solve the problem.

You might want to elevate the temperature much more for a few days to drive out the moisture everything has soaked up so far.
Click to expand...

Might treat it like freezers and use duct seal or silicon caulking on conduit runs. Perhaps even in the wire nuts.
 
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