troubleshooting yard lights

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back to square one, ok this thing is starting to drive me crazy.
recap:
replaced bad wire nut, left the last 2 light disconnected ( just to verify i had no problems with them) lights worked great for 3 days. so i stop by today to hook up the last to lights thinking i had the problem fixed, i turned on the lights they worked, turned them off, hooked up the last two lights & bam gfci tripped, so i disconnected the two lights i just hookup & gfci trips, so i go to the next box (working towards the gfci) disconnect all the wires in the box & the gfci still trips, go to the next same thing. finally i got the first light to go on and stay on without tripping so i connected the wires going to second box ( wires are still disconnected in box 2 there is no load)with the first box and bam gfci trips, so i replace gfci for the second time, no differents, so now i'm thinking i have a ground fault between lights 1 & 2 but last time i troubleshooted this circuit the problem was between light 4 & 5 now its between 1 & 2. last week lights 1 thru 4 worked fine as long as the lights after the fourth light were disconnected. i hope all this make sense
 
Think about this. A possible CUMULATIVE effect when all the lights on the circuit are on at the same time. Each light or section of wiring between lights has an imbalance of current between hot and the grounded conductor. On their own they are less than the current imbalance required to trip your gfi device. Added together they are high enough to cause an imbalance and trip the device. If that ends up being the case it won't be the first time I have seen this happen.
 
homeowner just called, the first 4 lights are working again ( i left the last 2 light diconnected)they are 40 watt incandence (sp), these lights were installed 7 years ago and just started tripping. i think i have a bad wire between the first & second lights. but i'll stop by this week & megger it
 
I had a similar case a few years back. 15 110v lights around a pool that were gfi and worked for a while then nuisance trip. The keeper was when they tripped at her daughters wedding reception in the yard(Mcmansion). There was no obvious short so I kept disconnecting and reconnecting driving myself crazy until I figured out that with all the lights on it gave the gfi just enough of an imbalance to trip. I split the string of lights in half with another feed so I had 7 on the old gfi and 8 on the new gfi. Now both were below the level of imbalance and been fine for years. Maybe use an gfi protected ext cord and give it a try on 1/2, not exactly something in a textbook but sometimes it's the only way.:cool:
 
Sometimes it's best to cut your losses. If the wire is big enough for the load just put in a transformer and run the lights on 12volts. You can buy 12volt medium based lamps at any RV supply.
 
Considering the amopunt of time this is taking from your life, I think I would just pull new wire with a helper, make sure none of it is nicked in the slightest way, and re nut it with goo filled nuts. There must be a little bit of a nick in one of the wires that gets a bit of water every now and then.
 
I have to wonder, are these yard lights and the associated wiring in or around garden areas and if so, has any recent planting been done?

Then there's always the possibility of groundhogs / moles / rodents chewing the underground cable.
 
Gfi??

Gfi??

If I understand the circuit correctly, I would remove the GFI from the lighting circuit and install a GFI receptacle only where they want the outlet. Could be they changed the bulbs to fluorescent, something is "nesting" in the fixture or something to cause the nuisance tripping. I believe you mitigated the risk by megging the circuit if you checked it to ground and to each conductor.
 
this weekend i went over to megger the whole circuit and got a low reading ( 100 k)between the first & second lights, every thing else i got 1M. so i ran a new wire between the lights & everything is working fine so far. i guess with 4 lights the wire insulation was fine but if all 9 lights were on the insulation would break down & create a fault














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I just remembered a troubleshoot that I did about 15 years ago.

The yard lights were uf cable and I spent forEVER trying to pin it down.

I FINALLY found the fault, by process of elimination, in a section of cable witn NO visable damage...nada....nothing. I brought that 2 foot piece back to show it around to everyone else.



Ahhh..old guys and their stories.

Did I ever tell you about...........
 
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