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I recently installed a waterfall in the back yard. It has two pumps, 4 amp each, running off of a 20 amp circuit, and wired with 12/2 wire. it also has six underwater lights.
Last week I unplugged one pump to see how well it would funtion on one. When I did that, the underwater lights got brighter..!
My first thoughts were, it's overloaded, or has a bad connection somewhere. It shouldn't be close to overloaded with pumps running at just under 8 amps total. The lights are tiny, low voltage lights.
In troubleshooting the problem, I discovered the guy who did the wiring has GFICs on all of the outlets on that circuit..! Usually there is only one GFIC to protect an entire circuit. I don't see any other problems in the system, so I was wondering if the extra GFIC's are causing the problem..?
I will be calling out a knowledgable electrician, but wondered if anyone could shed some light on the subject.
Thanks in advance...
I'm thinking voltage drop too. The number of GFCI's should have no effect other than being redundant.
Put a multimeter on the circuit and measure the actual voltage.
Maybe the pump and lights were somehow wired in series, instead of parallel. Strange things do happen.
The idea that the lights get brighter when unhooking a load could point to that. Putting bunch of GFI's in the same circuit might somehow be part of it. Not everything can be predicted. Isn't something I would do.
You can play around, hook it up like before, unhook, repeat until you sort of find the cause. Can even run a temporary cord off another circuit without GFI to power up that application and see if that makes a difference. Attempt to isolate it by cause and effect.
I hate messing around with those underwater lights. Electricity and power just never mix in my book.
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