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[markodom]

I need some help please... 

I have been trying to simply control (turn on and off) a small fountain and some out door lighting in my back yard.  I feel like I have tried everything thing.  My results are very sporadic.   At times it works fine and at other times (most of the time) I get no response.  I have read through a bunch of postings on line and I feel like I have tried everything so I will try to post directly myself.  I will attempt to describe what I have installed to see you can offer any advice. 

The fountain pump is a small >5 amp pump on a GFI protected outdoor outlet.  The outlet is about 75 feet from the house.  The circuit breaker for this outdoor outlet is shared with my master bathroom but I have tried it with nothing plugged in at all in the bathroom with the same results.  I have installed noise filters on all my computers and TV's in the house but NOT on my Refrigerators (2 large sized fridges and 2 small wine fridges).  The house is about 4300 sqft.  I put in a Phase Coupler/Repeater on my Dryer to make sure the signals are not a phase issue.  However the controller is plugged in, in my Master Bathroom which is on the same circuit as the control point.  I have also installed a signal booster which I plugged in, in my Master Bathroom hoping to increase the signal strength to the control point.  I did have a Filter on the fountain pump as I thought that might be causing noise but I found that the filter got really hot and that made me nervous so I took it off.  It was an appliance filter for less than 5 am appliances.

I hope I haven't left anything important out but I am about ready to give up on X10 at this house.  It is a less than 1 year old house and it just isn't working.  I had X10 divices running at my last house and I didn't have any of these problems.

I would welcome any ideas or suggestions you might have.

Thank you,
Mark

[KDR]

Being a new house and the fact your running on the master bedroom circuit might be you have an ARC circuit breaker installed in your main breaker panel. You can look and see if thats the case. Also check to see if all the breakers are the same. If not you might try moving the controller to another circuit and temporarily run and extension cord from that same circuit out to the fountain to see if it works.

National Electric Code now says that all bedrooms have to be protected by ARC circuit breakers. These breakers are not so X10 friendly.

[markodom]

Stupid question...  How do I tell if the breaker is ARC?

[KDR]

I think it says it right on the breaker. I have an older home and currently don't have any of them. A few members here have run into ths. If you do a search for ARC there are a couple of posts about them.

[Charles Sullivan]

One potential problem is the GFI.   Most ordinary GFIs seem to cause no problem but there are questions about the newer "arc detecting" GFIs.  Is the GFI for your fountain at the outlet or in the breaker box?

If you know what you're doing around power lines and the GFI is at the outlet, I'd suggest _temporarily_ replacing it with an ordinary receptacle.   If that solves the problem you can probably find an ordinary GFI that will work to substitute.

However if the GFI is in the breaker box and turns out to be one of the "arc detecting" type, it would not be a good idea to replace it since it's also protecting you from hazards inside your house.  (And I don't know any simple and safe solution to this problem.)

Please let us know what you find out.

[markodom]

I have confirmed that the circuit breaker is NOT an ARC fault breaker.

As to the GFI, it is an outlet GFI upstream of the outlet the fountain is plugged into.  Are there any particular brands of GFI's that we know don't interfere with X10?

[KDR]

Can you run an extension cord out to the fountain just to test it?

[markodom]

Yes I will givet that a try.  Just to be clear, I should run an extension cord to the fountain from a non-GFI outlet and I should plug the controller into an outlet not on that GFI circuit.  Correct?

[KDR]

That is correct. If it works then the problem may be the GFI if it doesn't work then we will need to dig deeper. Info on what controller you have what modules your using would help