I have some very old outdoor path lights in my front yard (see pic). Recently I found that they trip my upstream GFCI outlet when they were turned on by the timer at night. After some investigation, I found one of them is the root cause of the trip, and I realized the electric box is filled with water once opened… I closely inspected and think there are three possible places where the water could come in:
- upper hole that connects to the light cover, which admittedly already has some crack on it and it is not very tight and water sealed.
- the front plate itself, which has some soft cushion around the plate that I think is for sealing
- the two pipes under the box, for whatever reason the water might come from the ground?
The things is, I tried to use teflon tape around 1 and clean, retighten 2, there is still water inside after some rain last night. I am wondering what I can do to fix this. Since these lights are buried in the ground, I am hoping I can fix this particular one instead of ripping them all out.
More info about the light: they are so old that I couldn't find much info. It seems all the replacement pathlights that I can find in home centers are low voltage ones (12v). However, these lights connect straight into a mechanical timer in my garage, which is using regular 110v voltage.
Best Answer
That’s a standard weatherproof (Bell) box, and yes, sometimes they do accumulate and hold water as you have found.
Code not only allows boxes to be drained. Code requires boxes to be arranged to drain; according to 314.15, a 1/8” hole is allowed.
I have found conduit bodies and boxes at a low point (at the bottom of a hill or conveyor) to fill from the bottom, and others to fill from the top. It’s not important, just drill a hole in the bottom and you won’t have any more problems.
So turn off the power and drill a hole and forget about it.