I have a circuit with 3 outlets and a 20 amp breaker for my Christmas lights. The first outlet is a ground fault outlet. The other 2 are normal outlets. After about 15 or 20 minutes my breaker trips. I really dont think I have over 20 amps in lights. I would think that if it were a short due to snow the ground fault would trip first, but its not. I was very careful to waterproof all extension cord joins as best I could. Any thought are appreciated.|||You thinking is correct. Here is more. A short circuit between wires will trip the breaker immediately and it will not reset. So the breaker is tripping due to an overload condition. An overload causes heat inside the circuit breaker, causing it to trip thermally as opposed to magnetically as it does from a short circuit. A short to ground due to snow in excess of 5 mili-amps will cause the ground fault to trip rather than the breaker. So the answer is, overload. Do you know anyone with a clamp on amp meter? That will show you the actual load. Check the GFCI by pushing the test button.|||What do you have plugged in to the outlets besides Christmas lights? If there is anything that you can unplug, you can try that and see what happens. If the breaker does not trip then your circuit was overloaded. If it still trips then the problem is with the lights. I had a 20 amp breaker once that tripped prematurely and needed to be replaced.|||Its about 1 wat per bulb. Roughly 100 bulbs draw one amp. So count your bulbs and make sure you dont have more than 20 amps worth.|||You may have a short inside of one of the wires feeding your lights. Might not be the joints. It could possibly be the wires. But if you waterproofed them by wrapping them up in some kind of plastic that is a bad idea. The moisture cannot get out if any gets in there. Have them covered well off the ground but try not to wrap them up to the point where they can't get the moisture to evaporate from it. First I would try plugging in just one set. Testing it. Then after move to the next set. You will probably find out that its just one set doing it. So my best advice:
Off the ground
Don't wrap in plastic
Possible short in one of the wires feeding the lights
Covered but not to the point where moisture cannot escape.|||i'm no electrician but the extension cord may not be heavy enough and after a period it heats up causing more draw.also you could hae more amps on your lights than you think or it might be a combination.|||If your breaker trips before your GFI plug somethings not right. For a GFI to work properly it has to be the first plug connected from the fuse panel, that way it protects all the outlets after that. It sounds to me that this may not be the case here or maybe the GFI is not working. There is a small plug-in tester you can buy at lowes/home depot for about $5 that will tell you if your outlets are wired correctly and if they are GFI protected. If all else fails start unplugging your extension cords one by one (starting from the far end of course) and see if the problem goes away.
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