Our house is 7 years old and there's a GFCI outlet (always on) installed in our garage. I wanted to tap into the GFCI outlet to have electricity for the new fluorescent lights I installed in the garage. I didn't want to tear up the drywall so all I did was take an old heavy duty extension cord and cut-off the female side, stripped the wires and connect to the new outlet and plugged the male side of the extension cord to the GFCI outlet. After doing so, I tested to see if the new outlet would provide power and it did, also checking with a tester and everything was ok. I then proceeded to connect the new outlet to the switch (middle of the run) that controls the fluorescent lights using 14/2 NM gauge wiring. Every step of the way, I made sure the wiring was done properly by using the tester. Now after all this was done, I plugged the extension cord to the GFCI outlet and turned on the lights using the switch. And long behold, I have light in the garage. However, once in a while (and it seems to be random), when I turn-off the lights using the switch, the GFCI would trip. Then I would have to reset and all is well again. I read in previous posting (back in
2000), someone had a similar problem, but his GFCI was tripping when the lights were turned on. And it would seem that if I did the wiring incorrectly, the GFCI would also trip when I turn on the lights NOT when I turn them off. And again, it would be random. Also, to check if the extension cord was the culprit, I changed the wiring using 14/2 NM gauge, and the problem still exists. What did I do wrong? Is the GFCI that sensitive to detect a very small variance?Thanks.