Pool light grounding

Hi, I have a couple of questions about my swimming pool light..

We recently rebuilt a 40 year old inground pool. There was an old light in the pool when it was new, deactivated years ago. The niche was left in place and the cavity was covered over during a past liner change.

Now this spring we excavated the old niche, replaced with a new Hayward plastic niche and Astrolite, 300 watt, 12 volt. New transformer in the basement of the home.

I hired an electrician to wire transformer and light, and we did not have the instruction sheet for the light at that time.

After receiving the instruction sheet, I find electrician has missed several key points and i'd some opinions on how serious a problem I have here.

First, the instructions indicate the conduit from the niche must continue all the way to the basement and terminate a foot above water level. What electrician has done is no conduit, underground cable from house to junction box at ground level on pool deck, and cut pool light cable at that point and connected inside weatherproof junction box. There is approximately 4 feel of plastic conduit from niche to the junction box, sealed with silicon.

Second, instructions indicate the niche itself should be grounded and the ground wire encapsulated. This did not happen. I could easily snake a ground wire through the conduit and into the niche, but i cannot encapulate now since the pool is full of water and cannot be drained down the niche level without risking pulling new liner out of the coping track. Without encapsulation, the copper ground will rapidly corrode and break, since this is a "wet" niche which fills with water.

I am very concerned about the safety of this install, and could really use some opinion from someone with more electrical experience than me.

Reply to
anthonymark010
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Did the electrical inspector approve this installation?

According to the electrical code 680.24(A)(2)(c) Flush deck box. If used on a lighting system operating at 15 volts or less, a flush deck box shall be permitted if both of the following apply: (1) An approved potting compound is used to fill the box to prevent the entrance of moisture. (2) The flush deck box is located not less than 4' from the inside wall of the pool.

However if the manufacturer provided very specific instructions that must be followed, than the installation needs to be redone. You could contact the manufacturer to find out if it is okay to deviate as long as the installation is code compliant.

The most common type of pool lighting installation has deck boxes mounted around 8" high above the deck with the conduits coming into the bottom. They are usually located toward the back edge of the pool deck so that they are out of sight and to avoid a tripping hazard. By keeping the deck boxes 8" high there is no chance that water from the pool will get into them.

I don't recall ever seeing underground cable being used in a pool deck for lighting. It is usually conduit.

This circuit must be GFI protected.

I hope that you installed the #8 solid copper bonding wire and mesh in the deck. The niche probably needs to be bonded to this with a #8 solid as well.

Contact your pool company and ask them for suggestions.

Reply to
John Grabowski

I don't know of any exception that would allow direct burial to a deck box, but as for the wet niche, if it's plastic, there would be nothing to attach a bond to

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Reply to
RBM

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