Pool-light won't turn on --- HELP!!

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cool --

Haven't pulled cords yet, will do and update...

No reading from multimeter when there's no light in socket. But when the light is in the socket, the meter jumps around a lot and settles at 010 when I pigtail the wires to the testers. This is at 2000 ohms (there is no 1000 ohm setting on the multimeter)

ADDED:

What the heck is this? about a foot under the PLJB there is a clamping thing (that has been painted over with the wire shaft)... there is some kind of wire attached! But that too is painted over.

I will post a photo in a minute... wanted to get this written out in case you don't check again.
 
Okay, the green wire connected to the conduit below the PLJB is probably the bonding wire. This is separate from the pool light circuit. It should also have a copper wire (8 ga) extend from that bonding connector to a bonding lug on the pump motor. All is good there.

Okay, so it sounds like adding the light bulb to the fixture gives a reasonable level of resistance for the bulb. When the bulb is not there, the cable should have no continuity (e.g. essentially infinite resistance... clarifying this point from before). Make certain this is the case by repeating the test. Does your meter have a continuity tester? If it does, repeat the test w/ and w/o the bulb. You should have no continuity without the bulb, and continuity with the bulb in place. This is simply to demonstrate that there is no short in that circuit.
 
BTW, when you touch the leads of the meter together, you should see zero ohms, but when you touch the black and white leads of the light cord (when the light is removed), you should see pretty much what you see when the leads are not touching anything (this would tell you that there is an open circuit).

If this is the case, rewire the yellow to the black wire nut in the panel (after turning off power at the main breaker), rewire the black to yellow and white to white in the PLJB, and switch the GFCI breaker to on. Switch the power to the panel on at the main breaker. Check that the GFCI breaker has not popped, and test this by testing for 120V AC (make sure to change the setting on your meter to test in the roughly 200V AC range) by putting one lead on the GFCI's load terminal (e.g. where the black wire is connected) and the neutral bar. You should see 120V on your meter. Now, do the same test at the light fixture by CAREFULLY placing one of the test leads on the bottom contact inside the socket, and the other lead to the metal jacket on the inside of the socket. This should also read 120V. Let me know how this turns out. I need to take off shortly.
 
Okay, your testing with and without the light bulb reveals that there does not appear to be a significant short. This is good as replacing the light fixture would have been expensive. I'm a little baffled as to why this is causing the circuit to fault out, but I suspect there may be some small amount of leakage to ground. Try the test I described above and report back.
 
Also, if you detect 120V at the socket, turn the 15A breaker off, put in a bulb that you know works, and repeat the test. I wonder if there might have been some water in there that was causing the fixture to trip the GFCI breaker for some reason.

If a working bulb still causes the breaker to trip, I would leave the fixture out of the pool overnight, with the unit face down on the deck. As I mentioned, water may have gotten into the unit and that could be causing a ground fault for some reason. I checked a 60W incandescent bulb with my meter set to 2000 ohm range, it it came up with 0.14 kOhm (e.g. 14 ohms). Your 100W bulb would have less resistance, so 10 ohms makes sense for a cold lightbulb. This tells me that the light circuit is fine. Now to just get it to work in that panel!

I will check in the morning. Best of luck and be careful with the testing.
 
This causes the GF to pop.

Didn't run the multimeter test for it yet...

I'll add in the normal light switch and catch up with you tomorrow (hopefully you're willing to pop on, on a Saturday). :)

Thanks again for all the help!

ADDED:

I installed the normal light-switch (fits panel -- no metal cutting required, which is nice)... but same issues as with the PLW. Meaning, I can have it all wired up and ready to go, and as long as my light-switch is in the 'off' position, the GF breaker is happy. If I try to flip the light-switch to 'On', the GF pops.
 
I'll check in tomorrow morning and later in the afternoon. One thing to check... does the breaker still pop if you disconnect the black wire on the outlet? Try the same circuit test as before (e.g. turning off the main breaker to the subpanel, turn on the GFCI breaker and see if it pops). If it does not pop with a lightbulb in the fixture and with the side outlet wired, then you just need to replace that outlet with a standard one.

I'll check in tomorrow.
 

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Hey Craig --

You won't believe this... it rained last night. In Arizona. This is my kind of luck. The light fixture definitely won't be any drier today.

I believe I tried disconnecting the side outlet's black wire for that test before I gave up last night.
 
Okay, I want to find out if this is a ground fault or an overcurrent issue. So, I'm proposing two tests. Unfortunately, I'm running out of ideas.

1. Temporarily run black, white and green wires to the PLJB directly from the GFCI breaker terminals (black and white) and the grounding bar (green). Wire nut them together (except the green wire... for that, just wrap that wire around the spade connector of the light fixture's ground wire. Make sure the ground wire is free and is not touching the PLJB or conduit. Do the same test as usual. Does this still trip the breaker? Remove the light bulb. Does this now trip the breaker?

2. Insert the old 15A blue breaker on the breaker bus (you don't need to remove the new one for this). Connect the black wire to the blue breaker's terminal and connect the white wire (both currently connected to the GFCI breaker) to the neutral bar. Do the same tests as above, except looking for the blue breaker to pop.

The first test is simply to see if there might be a small current leakage in the wiring to the PLJB, and the second will tell us if this is a ground fault or an overcurrent issue.
 
OK... ran the tests...

1st test --- GF popped.

2nd test --- works, the light turns ON. Attempting to skip a step, I re-wired back to normal using this setup (using normal breaker to light switch & side-outlet to light fixture) and this works as well. Using the light switch, I can have the light on and the outlet working at the same time. I'm just using an extension cord with lighted female end to tell the outlet is getting power.
 
Okay, so this suggests that either a) the GFCI breaker is defective or b) there is a small leak to ground along the light fixture's cord. Obviously the latter would not be good. The GFCI is there to protect swimmers in the pool and thus I most strongly suggest that you make certain that nobody swims in that pool until the situation is fixed.

There are two things to do at this point:

1. Do resistance tests between the black and green wires, white and green wires, and black and white wires with the bulb in and the bulb out of the fixture. The point of this is to see if there might be any leakage to ground (and to repeat the test for the load/neutral lines). If you find any continuity between the black and the ground, there is a problem.

2. Take the GFCI breaker back to where you bought it and request a replacement. Tell them that the breaker is popping even though the line seems to be fine otherwise.

Do not be tempted to use the old breaker at this point because this could be a hazardous situation. I'm sorry to say that it may require replacement of the light fixture, which would run around $150-200 for a new Amerlite 500W unit. I'm hoping it's just the GFCI breaker is funky.
 
Will do -- I'll probably be able to post results at about 1pm.

After doing the multimeter tests and posting results -- would a way of testing to see the GF breaker is faulty be wiring in the GFCI outlet and seeing if that works?
 
JPBoston said:
Will do -- I'll probably be able to post results at about 1pm.

After doing the multimeter tests and posting results -- would a way of testing to see the GF breaker is faulty be wiring in the GFCI outlet and seeing if that works?
Click to expand...

You could try that, but I think it might just be better to return the GFCI breaker and get a new one. BTW, you definitely want to test all three combinations I mentioned on the disconnected light cord so that you can be certain there is no leakage between ground and the load or neutral wires.

One other thing... is that a metal conduit leading to the PLJB? It appears that the bonding grid wire is attached to it (since there is that bonding grid clamp below). If you find that there is no continuity between either load or neutral and ground wires in the fixture cord, it could be that there is some leakage to the bonding grid. If you directly connect the ground wires in the PLJB without them contacting the grounding nuts in there, does that prevent the GFCI from popping? Pool bonding is a somewhat complicated issue, so if this corrects the problem, I would suggest bringing in an experienced electrician to diagnose the issue. Still, swap out the GFCI breaker and see if that corrects the problem when the light is wired properly.

I'll check back later. I need to do some errands and work around here.

Cheers...

Craig
 

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