GFCi receptacle trips neutral to ground?

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ritelec

ritelec

Senior Member
Location
Jersey
Hello
Working on some outdoor rotted out fixtures around a fountain.

The pump and interior and exterior lighting is fed through a gfci receptacle that I replaced.

As I'm working with the switch for the exterior lights off, when I hit neutral to ground the gfci receptacle trips.

Should this happen or is something else going on ?

Thank you
 
ritelec said:
Hello
Working on some outdoor rotted out fixtures around a fountain.

The pump and interior and exterior lighting is fed through a gfci receptacle that I replaced.

As I'm working with the switch for the exterior lights off, when I hit neutral to ground the gfci receptacle trips.

Should this happen or is something else going on ?

Thank you
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That is supposed to happen. Remember a GFCI monitors current in both hot and neutral to see if they are the same. If the are not the same, any difference of 4-6 mA or greater is supposed to make them trip.

Neutral to ground fault will not always carry any current, but they have been specially designed for many years to detect neutral to ground fault even if there is not 4-6 mA of fault current. I don't know off the top of my head exactly how this works but I believe the unit injects some kind of signal on the outgoing neutral and if it finds a path other then the protected ungrounded conductor - it will trip, even if there is no load on the circuit.
 
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