ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Line side GFI

I have a job where the neutral and ground must be touching causing the GFI to trip. It's on outside lights. I was going to tie the lights themselves on the line side of the GFI and then tie the outlets on the load side, but if I hook the neutral up on the line side that feeds these lights, it trips the GFI. On the older models I don't think it mattered on the line side. I've taken the lights apart before and didn't see any "shorted out" neutral and
ground, so I'm assuming it's underground somewhere and inaccessible. Anyone ever had a problem similar to this? I guess I'll have to bring another circuit just for the outlets, so the GFI won't trip... Steve..

It sounds like if your connecting the grounding conductors together in that box, then that is most likely the problem, since the fault will now be common to the neutrals on both the line and load side of the GFCI receptacle.