GFCI Question

[t.vanhouts]

I come a 230V 50Hz country.

My lor pc16 board is placed in a original lor box. My power connectors were put in a box or a plastic bag on the grass.

The Netherlands is very rainy. Before last christmas we had heavy rain. about 5 mm in a few hours. Then with the holydays we had about 10 centimeter snow. All the lights and my controllers worked perfect without any failures.

So keep all connetions dry then it works fine.

[Brad]

Fruit Cake...now there's something you can use to keep your plugs elevated.

[DownTown]

Sounds like a good place to use CRC 6-66 Marine Formula. See http://www.crceurope.com/wwwcrc/tds/TCM3%206-66.PDF for more info.



D.T.

[Guest guest]

Jeff, I agree GFCI's definitely. I don't totally disagree with the taping, just that for some odd reason, I had 3 strings and that was the only way they'd stay dry and work! I tried securing the sockets to the plastic candy canes (non-lit type) in the down position, tried covering them with a plastic bag, which did condensate badly and made things much worse, the last resort was the use of electrical tape on these particular strings and it worked.

So I can only glean from my experience what worked in my particular situation. BTW: these strings were way above ground level as were their plugs, these were at least 3', possibly 4' off the ground. So I shouldn't of been having any problems with them.

It's why I say it was just a weird circumstance. The other 97% of my connections weren't taped at all and were exposed and never had an issue.

I'm seriously considering retiring these 3 L.E.D. light strings for "indoor" use only because of their inability to get along with the outside weather.

[Guest guest]

Brad wrote:

I've posted this in another thread but, don't remember which one. I used 1 1/2" ABS plastic drain pipe cut into 3 inch lengths to cover my plugs. Slide the pipe over the end of the extension cord, plug in your lights then slide the pipe back over the connection. This works well to keep rain out of the connection, keep the connections clean and, allow for ventilation if any rain dose get in by chance. Though this will not protect them from standing water. The ABS drain pipe is cheap and a ten foot section will make about 34 covers give or take how accurate you to stay to the 3 inch lenght.

hmmm, never thought of that before.

Thanks for the tip Brad. :cool:

I may just try and do that this year. Of course I will have to paint the pvc pipe green so it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.