GFI Tripping

[captainron19]

OK so now for the second time I had a GFI Trip that is going to my arches (4) along with my light up FM Frequency Sign.

The weird thing is... this seems to be happening in the early morning and both days we had a heavy frost outside.

I know it is none of the lights on my arches because it is tripping when the power is off to them. So... it is either my outlet (which is new), the cord going to (2) multi use plugs (the ones with ground stakes), the Light up sign, or one of my 2 LOR boxes (which are brand new)

Any ideas where a situation of a heavy morning frost would impact the GFI with regards to my configuration? We had a monsoon of rain the other day with 30mph winds and I did not trip one GFI it seems to only be happening on very cold mornings.

[-klb-]

That is a tricky one..

Is the outlet protected by a suitable in use weather cover?

If not, I would start there. Next, I would try spraying your extension cord ends, and inlet cords with WD-40, and letting it dry for a couple of hours before plugging it in.

This is mostly a guess, but even if you are not drawing frost into the connection, the connections are still likely cooling down below ambient, and likely drawing moisture to condense in the connections. It is part of why sealed/taped connections will manage to draw moisture so well. I'd almost suggest that if the WD-40 doesn't help, or maybe some dielectric grease, the next step might be to put some sort of thermal break between the cord ends, so that they don't cool to the night sky so well.

[captainron19]

thanks I will give it a shot = just woke up this morning and not a huge heavy frost this morning and nothing is tripped

[captainron19]

Well I think I might of come to a solution ....maybe ... hopefully

Nothing was tripped this morning. Just a few minutes ago I went to clear some leaves from around my controller box connections for my arches (The same circuit that was experiencing the GFI trips)

When I went back inside and ran a test via my hardware utility I noticed one of my arches was not lit so basically I lost power to one side of one of my controller (have the 30 amp boxes)

After some more fooling around I saw that when I jiggled the power plugs going into the ground staked multi plug extension cord the lights would flicker on and off. It appears that the plugs for that extension cord might of been a little loose inside which is what I am thinking that may have led to the GFI tripping on a heavy frost morning.

Possible?

Regardless, I replaced that cord/unit with a new one and even jiggled the plugs to make sure it was not the controller plug experiencing a problem and all seems ok so far.

[-klb-]

If the inlet plug was not fully seated, it is especially possible that something like wet leaves, or grass may have got in between and provided a path to ground...