LEDs and GFIs

[bcroe]

As much as I prefer incandescents, a few screw in LED lights are being swapped in
here. The reason isn't energy efficiency; I have been known to turn on every light in
the house for heat on the coldest night of the year. Rather its for reliability, for some
extremely hard to reach bulbs in out buildings, and for some very frequently cycled
bulbs. The out buildings are mostly florescent which have a long warm up time in
the coldest weather, so there have been enough incandescents (mostly turned off
in summer) to see around at night. A few are quite hard to reach for replacement,
so I'm giving the LEDs a trial.

And a few lights get cycled so often, I'm tired of replacing them. Likely the filaments
made across the Pacific are even less tolerant of on/off cycles, than the ones we
used to get from here.

A GFI outlet is supposed to disconnect when the differential current flowing through
it exceeds 5 ma. Lately I have been seeing a lot of GFI tripping even when there
is no load plugged in. The cause seems to be the line glitches of up to a second,
which are a pretty common event here. I'm getting tired of having to reset these so
much; anybody else see this? Bruce Roe

[kb58]

Are the GFIs that are tripping have LED lights downstream of them? AFAIK, GFIs are only used to protect AC wall outlets where water could be a safety concern. Lights are typically connected upstream of the GFI sensor units and aren't under their control. Also, you said you get "pretty common" line glitches. That seems to imply an outside event unrelated to the lighting being used.

FWIW, I get false GFI trips due to ants (for whatever reason) setting up home inside the outlet box.

[bcroe]

Are the GFIs that are tripping have LED lights downstream of them? AFAIK, GFIs are
only used to protect AC wall outlets where water could be a safety concern.

Some trip with nothing loading them. That is not proper operation. I have a lot of them spread over
5 acres, inside and outside. Bruce

[SunEagle]

Some trip with nothing loading them. That is not proper operation. I have a lot of them spread over
5 acres, inside and outside. Bruce

I have one that trips every time it rains. I know I have some water leaking into an outside receptacle which is what causes it to trip due to a ground fault.

[Mike90250]

Newly installed GFI and smoke alarms, seem to have almost 20% failure rate. After swapping the duds out, things have gone well. But what a pain, pulling outlets and swapping GFI's because they are made of junk and overseas.

[reader2580]

I replaced every switch and receptacle in my house in 2014. I used Leviton GFCI receptacles and no failures. They aren't as cheap as the no-name Chinese GFCI, but I like things to work. I also installed some pretty expensive Kidde smoke/CO alarms with no failures. I stay away from the cheap store brand electrical stuff.

[bcroe]

I replaced every switch and receptacle in my house in 2014. I used Leviton GFCI receptacles and no failures. They aren't as cheap as the no-name Chinese GFCI, but I like things to work. I also installed some pretty expensive Kidde smoke/CO alarms with no failures. I stay away from the cheap store brand electrical stuff.

Thanks all, that is probably the answer. Just get a load of quality GFIs and swap out those
that gives me trouble. Bruce Roe

[NEOH]

I put my all of my exterior GFI Outlets inside of Weather-Proof Outlet Boxes.
It has significantly reduced false tripping.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001JEPX4Y/ref=asc_df_B001JEPX4Y5217204

Make sure the lid / cover is DEEP, to prevent severe bending of the cord.

[bcroe]

I put my all of my exterior GFI Outlets inside of Weather-Proof Outlet Boxes.
It has significantly reduced false tripping.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001JEPX4Y/ref=asc_df_B001JEPX4Y5217204

Make sure the lid / cover is DEEP, to prevent severe bending of the cord.

True, but most of my false trips were not outdoor locations. An outdoor box should
be standard outdoors. They seem to come in a couple varieties, those that seal
when not in use, and those that keep rain out even with a cord plugged in. Need to
convert to the latter in some cases to supply the electric fences going active around
the solar out back. Bruce Roe

[tyab]

Interestingly enough, GFI's are still only required for outlets but arc-fault as of 2014 are now outlets or devices - see 210.12(A). Is a light a device - not sure - I guess some time reading article 410 might clear that up.

Couple of years ago I replaced every light in my home with LED's - we are talking at least a 100 here - some are on GFI protected branches. Have not had any trip for no reason - but we actually have rather clean power from PG&E when not having storms. During snow or lightning storms - all bets are off. Even from the power outages we get in the mountains from those storms - no random trips of the GFI outlets. (Humm - sort makes me wonder how many are really working - maybe time to check...)

Side note about outdoor outlets - in the 2014 code - 406.9(B) outdoor outlets that are considered a wet location (for example not under a roof overhang) are required to be weather resistant even when in operation - they should be marked "extra duty". For example a socket on a desk not covered by a roof, or in my case a socket down at the solar system. In addition the actual receptacle is required to be weather resistant (these have a WR symbol on them). These Leviton's industrial series have stainless steel straps and clips to prevent rusting.

https://flic.kr/p/W72Jxv

https://flic.kr/p/VvTxeU

https://flic.kr/p/UPGdCS

https://flic.kr/p/W3ybqY

[bcroe]

I replaced the 2 prime offenders with 20A brand L GFI outlets. So far so good; those removed
were tripping several times a week. They were opened up, I see they use some of those cheap
electrolytic caps that have caused me much grief in other electronics. Just how that integrated
circuit detects common mode current isn't obvious at a glance; they have designed out the
expensive iron cores used in early 60s units. Bruce Roe