I can't believe how many hours I've been trying to get one (of two, new-off-the-shelf) GFCI receptacles to work. By this, I mean that they both perform fine as protected receptacles, but as soon as I connect a neutral extended from the load terminals to any neutral in the central jbox: CLICK...
It's been a long time since I messed with these, but another thread on this subject reminded me I should be looking for some significant voltage to ground on various neutrals, thus perhaps isolating a single circuit where a neutral is getting some leakage from the hot side. I set about to do that this morning. And yes, I found there's ~9mA leaking to neutral on a kitchen-light circuit (more on that later). Unable to isolate that to any specific cause, I decided to leave that circuit off, which dropped the leakage current to around 1.5mA. That should be plenty low enough to not trip the GFCI, right?
Nope...at least, not these. Pass & Seymour LeGrand 15A, they are. I swapped them out - same with both.
I also tried connecting the neutral before heating up the ckt - same results (only this way, the click was a little farther from me...)
Most of my metering was done at the load-center, between ground bus and neutral, with many trips back to verify readings on the meter, then back to the central jbox to futz...endlessly.
This is a rental unit that definitely doesn't need a hair-triggered GFCI giving the tenant grief anyway, even if I DO get things resolved. So after about six aggregate hours into this, I'm wishing I could go back in time a few days and just get a damned GFCI breaker instead - I'd be SO far ahead of where I am now. And I may well do that, though it bothers me to give up on a mystery.
Unrelated, I think, to the above, but regarding that kitchen-light circuit: it's got a not-too-cheesy Lutron slide dimmer on it, and is a 120V LED track-light fixture. This is easily as bizarre as the rest of my problems: while monitoring leakage current between neutral and ground buses at the panel, as I mentioned, I found about 9mA of the leakage was happening in that lighting circuit. But if I bypassed the Lutron dimmer...NO leakage. Verified twice. Just wire-nutted those two leads together, instead of routing them through the dimmer. That's including when it was hanging in free air, so no chance of anything like 9mA being leaked to ground OR neutral. As I said, this didn't ultimately help the GFCI load-side NOT trip, but it sure seemed like a smoking gun of some kind at the time. What am I missing THERE? Or anywhere?
It's been a long time since I messed with these, but another thread on this subject reminded me I should be looking for some significant voltage to ground on various neutrals, thus perhaps isolating a single circuit where a neutral is getting some leakage from the hot side. I set about to do that this morning. And yes, I found there's ~9mA leaking to neutral on a kitchen-light circuit (more on that later). Unable to isolate that to any specific cause, I decided to leave that circuit off, which dropped the leakage current to around 1.5mA. That should be plenty low enough to not trip the GFCI, right?
Nope...at least, not these. Pass & Seymour LeGrand 15A, they are. I swapped them out - same with both.
I also tried connecting the neutral before heating up the ckt - same results (only this way, the click was a little farther from me...)
Most of my metering was done at the load-center, between ground bus and neutral, with many trips back to verify readings on the meter, then back to the central jbox to futz...endlessly.
This is a rental unit that definitely doesn't need a hair-triggered GFCI giving the tenant grief anyway, even if I DO get things resolved. So after about six aggregate hours into this, I'm wishing I could go back in time a few days and just get a damned GFCI breaker instead - I'd be SO far ahead of where I am now. And I may well do that, though it bothers me to give up on a mystery.
Unrelated, I think, to the above, but regarding that kitchen-light circuit: it's got a not-too-cheesy Lutron slide dimmer on it, and is a 120V LED track-light fixture. This is easily as bizarre as the rest of my problems: while monitoring leakage current between neutral and ground buses at the panel, as I mentioned, I found about 9mA of the leakage was happening in that lighting circuit. But if I bypassed the Lutron dimmer...NO leakage. Verified twice. Just wire-nutted those two leads together, instead of routing them through the dimmer. That's including when it was hanging in free air, so no chance of anything like 9mA being leaked to ground OR neutral. As I said, this didn't ultimately help the GFCI load-side NOT trip, but it sure seemed like a smoking gun of some kind at the time. What am I missing THERE? Or anywhere?
