circuit breaker popping o

[barry martin]

Dan:

DK> I have a dedicated 20 amp circuit that feeds 4 outdoor recepticals spaced DK> around my yard. There is probably a total of 300 feet of 12 AWG Romax DK> underground wire used, burried about a foot deep in our (very) sandy soil. DK> This setup has been working fine for years, until the other day when the DK> circuit breaker popped. We reset it, and things were fine until the middle

This does sound like a "fun one"! Once every 24 hours, at night, and just started. I would tend to think in terms of a daily (nightly) event, or possibly thermal. For the latter possibly dinged insulation and when it cools down at night the wire shifts slightly, allowing contact to ground. Could also be a staple through the insulation, possibly grounding through metal siding or similar.

In the event category, possibly a sprinkler system (neighbour's?), the spray has been adjusted or plantings grew/trimmed so now the water hits a receptacle?

- ¯ barry.martinþATþthesafebbs.zeppole.com ®

• Four out of five people think the 5th person is an idiot.

[Jimmie]

I would start by replacing the four outlets. Easy and cheap to do. Even if the outlets are not THE problem you may still fix it in the process of changing them. If changing the oulets doent fix your problem it will give you a chance to map out your wiring. With all the outlets removed and wires carefuly placed so there is no danger of shorts or anyone getting shocked energise the circuit and determine which wire is hot. This wire will mark the first outlet in the string. Turn off the power and install the new box. Repeat the process for each aditional box. Inspect the boxes for damage and water infiltration. Replace old weather covers. If this doesnt fix the problem or show you what the problem is at lest you have the information where you can divide the circuit up and determine in which section the problem lies. I was intentionally a little vague on how to do some of these things. If you dont know what I am talking about leave it to someone who does.

[Jimmie]

OOPS should read what I type,said box when I should have said outlet a few times. I would also like to assume that this is a GFCI circuit. If this is the case 300 ft is a lot of cable to put on one. Sometimes leakage current caused by capacitance between the wires can trip them. Had this problem on a storge shed. Shed was ona GFCI breaker because the was an outlet on the outside of the shed. Invariably when I went to turn on the light in the shed the breaker would be tripped. New GFCI breaker seemed to help for a while but problem still occured just not as often, Fix was to replace GFCI breaker with a standard breaker and place a GFCI outlet at the shed.