tmbrown97
Senior Member
That circuit you're describing sounds pretty weird... When I moved into this house (not far from you so may be similar) - I had what sounds like the same thing - there's a switch in the garage - right next to the switch that controls the garage lights - that's wired to a dedicated outlet in the eaves for the xmas lights. Except - if you flipped the switch, the breaker would pop... because the electrician wasn't paying attention and wired it wrong... it was an end-of-run switch meaning no common - just one romex run to the switch with power coming in the black and returning on the white. At the outlet, it was hooked up white to common and black to hot - so the second you flipped the switch on, you connected power to common and it blew the breaker.
What I ended up doing there originally was I got a UPB outlet to install up in the eaves in place of the GFCI; I then replaced the dedicated breaker in the panel with a GFCI so I'd still have protection; then I used a UPB Slave switch back in the switch location - it only needs 2 wires instead of 3, and it acts as an extension of the outlet rather than a totally separate device (and you can do the 5-tap into setup from the switch).
Later that seemed totally pointless to me since I would *never* go to the garage to manually control the xmas lights - so I put a scene switch in that spot and stole power from the other switch so there's a 4-button scene switch there with a "whole house off" and "downstairs off" buttons... which still rarely get used because as soon as the alarm countdown timer ends, the house turns off anyway. </Ramble>
I can't think of anything that would "clunk" like a relay - that makes no sense... but if you're tripping a breaker or GFCI I could see that... it's entirely possible that something is mis-wired there. Otherwise I guess there's a chance of a contactor being used, but I highly doubt it. I would check the switch to see if it still has power after that "clunk" - I'm guessing it doesn't - or if it does, the outlet probably does not (check the GFCI).
What I ended up doing there originally was I got a UPB outlet to install up in the eaves in place of the GFCI; I then replaced the dedicated breaker in the panel with a GFCI so I'd still have protection; then I used a UPB Slave switch back in the switch location - it only needs 2 wires instead of 3, and it acts as an extension of the outlet rather than a totally separate device (and you can do the 5-tap into setup from the switch).
Later that seemed totally pointless to me since I would *never* go to the garage to manually control the xmas lights - so I put a scene switch in that spot and stole power from the other switch so there's a 4-button scene switch there with a "whole house off" and "downstairs off" buttons... which still rarely get used because as soon as the alarm countdown timer ends, the house turns off anyway. </Ramble>
I can't think of anything that would "clunk" like a relay - that makes no sense... but if you're tripping a breaker or GFCI I could see that... it's entirely possible that something is mis-wired there. Otherwise I guess there's a chance of a contactor being used, but I highly doubt it. I would check the switch to see if it still has power after that "clunk" - I'm guessing it doesn't - or if it does, the outlet probably does not (check the GFCI).
