GFCI--Red LED stays on

You may need to hold the switch down for up to ten seconds or so for it = to=20 reset. Sometimes the button is hard to reach, and it doesn't have a snap =

action "click", so you can use a plastic pen or similar tool to push it.

Something else you can do is disconnect the circuit at the breaker box, = and=20 then read resistance from both the black and white wires to earth = ground. Be=20 very careful. If you are not "dead sure" what you are doing, you will = soon=20 BE dead for SURE!

Paul=20

Is the GFCI a 'latching' or 'non-latching' type? Make and model, please?

Active/passive latching/non-latching

RCDs may be obtained that have different behaviours if the circuit they are protecting is de-energised.

• One type will trip on power failure and not re-make the circuit when the circuit is re-energised. This type is known as non-latching.[citation needed] [8]

• Another type will maintain the circuit after power is restored. This type is known as latching or active.

--Winston

Pushing on Test or Reset for 10 to 15 seconds didn't change anything.

I have no idea which switch in the breaker box is for this outlet. The breaker box was installed 10 years ago, and I had an electrician install two more circuits about five years ago. I may have a diagram I drew several years ago. The box is in a small 300' square foot building.

The device looks nowhere like the link Winston provided. I cannot determine the mfer, but it's probably a Levitron. I found a instruction sheet for a GFCI in my electric parts box, and it mentions a red LED. The sheet was for a Levitron. The device is commonly found in households.

When our local h/w store is open tomorrow, I might be able to determine the mfer.

I put the outlet outdoors about five years ago. I either bought it here then or used one I had in my electric box that was about 15 years old.

What powers the LED while it's declaring a fault?

I have had the LED go on a number of times over our long winter. Pushing the proper button got it back on. It doesn't get a lot of notice, since a measuring device associated with it is mostly non-operational in the winter. It's a sky camera, and there's not much to look at in the winter. Typically the LED turns on after a rain storm. We get 60" a year here, all in the winter.

Apparently the LED is powered from the input side of the GFCI.

It is telling you that some amount of current that it sends out the 'line' side is *not* returning via the 'neutral' side. It's saying you have a dangerous condition involving current not going exactly where you want it to go.

People have suffered nasty shocks under these circumstances.

So, in the past after a ground fault event, you could press the 'reset' button and bring power back to the cable, until the next rain, yes?

I suppose that your plastic pipe is no longer doing it's job of keeping your cable nice and dry.

Based on what you've said here, I would conjecture that either the 'line' or 'neutral' side of the 40' cable came into contact with that water intermittently during winter and has now found a more permanent place to leak current to ground.

Diagnosis and repair are in order!

Here is something that could be educational and fun.

I would first turn off all the power to the outbuilding. (Shouldn't take long to determine which breakers power those circuits.)

Then I would attach my shop vacuum to the near side of the plastic pipe and watch the vacuum fill with water. (Use about 6' too much duct tape.) I would go to the outbuilding listen at the switch box for the sound of entering air.

If you do detect moisture in the plastic pipe, you will want to uncover and repair the crack or installation error that is allowing water in.

--Winston

...

Yes, up until the other night resetting was very easy. Interestingly though, it has not rained really hard for more than a week, but it may have been a month since I had to reset.

I have a shop vac. 6" duct tape? I have a sub-pump, which might be easier to attach. I hope I do not have to dig up ground. It's clay, and either loaded with water or hardened.

I mapped the switches this morning. There are five switches. #5 controls the outlet 40' from the building, but there's another outlet 125' further out from the building for a pond, and is on #5. It's elevated by about 5' from the first outlet. I think it has its own length of wire, possibly a different gauge wire. I disabled #5 until I can get this fixed.

I think I'll call my electrician this morning to see if he can be of any help.

(...)

Could be soil movement cracked the plastic pipe, or something.

I'd be tempted to disconnect the GFCI and use a multimeter to determine resistance from each downstream wire to ground. If both 'line' and 'neutral' show infinite resistance to ground and the GFCI will still not drive the lines, perhaps the GFCI is broken. Any lightning in the area recently?

An attempt at humor. I mentioned six feet of duct tape to illustrate the lashup necessary to attach a shop vacuum to a piece of plastic conduit.

I imagine that the shop vacuum is *much* more self-priming.

I suffer from that stuff too.

Perhaps you can use the existing cable as a leader to pull some 'submarine power cable' through the plastic pipe. :)

Sounds like a good plan.

--Winston

I thought he said six FEET of duct tape. ;-)

For the clay, make a 4" x 8" x 2" mold, get some straw, and cast the clay into adobe bricks, then build a tunnel for your wires. ;-)

Of course, you'll need some kind of sump (or a runoff place) to drain the wetness from the yard.

Have Fun! Rich

Truth be told, I've done this very thing. The shop has a brand- named Shop-Vac(r?) shop vac, but it was lacking sufficient wands. The kit with wands, hose, and nozzle was like forty-five bucks! I looked for some PVC or ABS pipe, but an eight- or ten-foot piece was almost ten bucks! So I thought I'd amble down to the Home Depot to see if I could find anything, and there was gray plastic (I think PVC) conduit, for like 2.99 for a ten foot piece!

I only needed about three feet of duct tape to wrap around the PVC to make a snug fit to the hose cuff, and I still have another five feet of conduit as a spare. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Actually, my sub-pump will not do me any good, so I bought a "drill" pump this morning for $10. My hose may not be flexible to make a bend, although there's a bend where the vertical 4' conduit goes into the ground.

I'm just going to turn off the circuit and take out the GFCI, after checking as you mention above. If the unit is defective, then I probably do not need to pump water.

I could drop a little gasoline down there, and follow it with a match. :-)

(...)

If there *is* water in the plastic pipe and you are not going to replace your wiring with 'underwater & direct bury' cable, you really *do* need to remove the water and repair the pipe so that no water can enter it. Think *dry*.

All bets are off if your wires are allowed to get damp. :)

--Winston

(...)

You *do* realize that comes awfully close to using duct tape to do duct work? I'm not going to report you to the guys at the Possum Lodge this time, but be careful in the future, y'hear? :)

--Winston

why don't you just use the existing wire as a pull wire and pull in some direct burial type cable ?

Jamie

A new branch to the thread. The other one has gotten frazzled.

I decided to push a 1/4" garden irrigation tube down the vertical tube. It was about 20' long, and it went in smoothly. I pulled it out, and most of it showed water.

I then decided to pump it out with the "drill" pump using the tube. It wouldn't work. The pump requires a 3/4" or 1" diameter. I had used a cap of the right size that had a hole for the 1/4" tube. After taking it down to the h/w store, and experimenting with it, it became apparent I'd have to attach a "full" sized tube.

It started raining, so I've given up for the evening. A pump for a 1/4" tube would probably do the trick. However, I plan to check the GFCI tomorrow. Maybe I won't need the pump.

The "drill pump" probably requires priming and a constant supply of water at its input. Likely not a good choice for what you are trying to do. The shop vac hooked up to blow air into the pipe has a far batter chance of drying things than hooking it up to pull the water out. Of course, that is not the solution to your problem.

The weak points in your setup, aside from any defects, are at the outlets at 125' and at 40'. Open them up, clean any dirt/gunk in the j boxes and _replace_ whatever receptacles are there. Next, replace the GFCI. Receptacles outdoors and in unheated outbuildings collect condensation, spiderwebs, dirt etc. A GFCI that has tripped multiple times may well have burned contacts. So, since you have to invest time for diagnosis anyway, you might as well replace the devices you need to remove for inspection/cleaning and the GFCI (because of the multiple trips). NOW you can start troubleshooting if you haven't fixed the problem. You DO NOT want to go through all the effort of pulling new UF cables, digging trenches, replacing conduit etc only to discover that all you needed to do was spend $20 and replace two receptacles plus a GFCI.

Wetness in the conduit is not causing the trip alone, and it could be normal condensation. Of course, if rain water is getting into the conduit, that's not normal, but it still isn't the sole cause of the problem. The conductors still have to come into contact with the water, so one or more of the conductors insulation has to be compromised somewhere, too. If you have eliminated the other possibilities, you could try pulling new UF cable in the existing conduit. If you _know_ rainwater is getting into the conduit you've got to fix whatever is causing that - which might mean a lot of digging to run new conduit.

I'm working hard to get you to spend the ~20 bucks for the receptacles and GFCI - can you tell? :-)

Ed

Good info. I appreciate your effort, and very likely will just spend the $20.

If I do not find a solution above ground, then it's highly unlikely I will spend lots of dollars excavating a trench. For probably 4 or more years I simply ran one of those orange power cords out of the building along the ground out to the equipment. It worked very well. No animals ever chewed on the cord, unlike damage they've done to 1/2" irrigation tubing I've run around the property. The only noticeable "damage" was the color of the cord dulled, but yet the flexibility remained.

I will likely take the drill pump back. However, I'm now curious about any type of pump that might work in such a situation. BTW, the shop vac approach is pretty much out of the question. There really is no good way to attach it w/o removing the outlet box.

(...)

What were the results of your resistance measurements? Infinite resistance to ground on line and neutral?

(...)

They don't self-prime very well, under the best of circumstances.

You could probably have the box gutted and removed in 10 minutes.

Doesn't matter. You answered the question about water incursion and that is all the shop vac was for. Now that we know water is getting into the plastic pipe, drying it is useless until it is repaired.

--Winston

I installed a new GFCI today and it is working just fine. It's the same as the defective one. Pass and Seymour GFCI.

Keep us posted. :)

--Winston