Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > House
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 07-25-2009, 06:53 PM
 
Location: Apple Valley Calif
7,474 posts, read 22,847,675 times
Reputation: 5682

Advertisements

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...
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 07-25-2009, 09:09 PM
 
Location: Mishawaka, IN
855 posts, read 2,392,693 times
Reputation: 702
Is it very far from the breaker box to the waterfall? I'm no electrician but the first thing I thought of off the top of my head is voltage drop.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 07-25-2009, 09:37 PM
 
Location: Knoxville
4,705 posts, read 25,242,318 times
Reputation: 6130
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 07-26-2009, 03:10 PM
 
3,020 posts, read 25,703,272 times
Reputation: 2806
Default Maybe had things wired in series.............

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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > House
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 11:28 AM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top