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.