weather question

[coachers]

 Do you guys run your shows while it's raining?

   Is it okay to?
  What damage could happen to the equipment?

[castortiu]

I do.

Having no rain is the exception where I live, so I keep the LEs off the ground and inside plastic bags. I keep the lights off the ground as well or they will leak and spark against the grass.

I installed my own two circuits from the central panel with their own breakers since if I run from standard outlets with GFCI they won't last 10 minutes before they breaks.

Cas.

[rrowan]

As long as the boards stay dry you shouldn't have any problems, baring Murphy's Law of course

Last year my show ran in the rain and even buried under show. I am impressed how well the Keptel cases worked.

For added protection RJ has recommended the use of Corrosion X being applied to the pcbs

Cheers

Rick R.

[Rainlover]

Like Cas, we live in the Pacific Northwest. If we didn't run our shows in the rain, we wouldn't run many shows.
I just try to keep everything up off the ground. So far, we have had 2 days without rain and we have had very few problems.

John

[Jimm]

Last night we had rain and my show did not do so well.  All of the controllers were fine but I had 3 GFCI's trip.  I tried resetting but they tripped again. I added the GFCI's  this year thinking it was the right thing to do.  Last year I had no trouble.  I have 100 or so extension cords running around on the grass in my yard and the cords with the rain does not go good together.  My first thought was to get rid of the GFCI's but then remembered why I put them in.  So I think I found another solution.  Tonight I am going to bag each of the plug ends and see how that works.  I think it will work.  What do others do?  I will post after I try this.
Jim   

[magic8192]

I had GFCI trip problems last year.

I have metal cage mini trees and I have tried coating the bottom 6 inches of each leg with liquid electrical tape this year.

I have also taken some cheap tupperware knockoff boxes that I got from the dollar store and cut holes in the lid.  I have shoved the power cord connectors up into the hole then snapped the tupperware box back on the lid.   The box is sitting upside down over the hole, seems like it might work?

All LE boards are coated with corrosion X

Hopefully things will be better than last year. 

[coachers]

 The corrosion X on the boards is for real?  It's a lubricant! I was sure KY Jelly would be the next suggestion. 

 I thought Rick was pulling my leg.

 Okay, so corrosionX displaces water, I get it now.  Also, has dielectric properties. Who knew?


 Oh Yeah, RJ knew...

[magic8192]

If you search for corrosionx on youtube, you can see videos of people waterproofing  and testing all kinds of stuff with it. 

[budude]

If you search for corrosionx on youtube, you can see videos of people waterproofing  and testing all kinds of stuff with it. 

The best one is where they plunge an old crt style color TV into a tub of water while running - great stuff!

[Jimm]

Bagged all of the plugs and it's going to rain tonight.  Hope it works.

[jnealand]

I never turn anything off, but usually when it rains my mini trees get hit with a GFI trip.  After some discussion with blearning I unplugged my lawn lights, which were on the same circuit with the metal frame mini trees, reset the circuit (while it was raining) and never had a failure the rest of the evening, so that tells me it was the lawn lights and not the metal framed mini trees.  Next year I plan to upgrade my mini trees to LEDs and that will get rid of my last major source of power usage.  20amps draw with the minis and only 2 amps for everything I have on the house.  Big difference.  The house stuff is 100% LED.

[Jimm]

So I bagged all of connectors and it helped.  We still had a couple of issues and I just had to unplug some things and live without them.  More rain to come.  I am not very happy with the GFCI's but I guess they are doing what they are supposed to do.
Jim

[coachers]

I corrosion X everything and all went well last night but the flag. I guess all the lights on chicken wire found a way to trip the GFI's. I unplugged the SSRs to the flag and ran the show without.

  After the season, I'm going to rethink the flag build to be more weather friendly. Maybe use rope lights next year....

[RJ]

I corrosion X everything and all went well last night but the flag. I guess all the lights on chicken wire found a way to trip the GFI's. I unplugged the SSRs to the flag and ran the show without.

  After the season, I'm going to rethink the flag build to be more weather friendly. Maybe use rope lights next year....

plastic net from home depo works good as it is non conductive. Thats what our singing female santa is made of.

RJ

[wbuehler]

I corrosion X everything and all went well last night but the flag. I guess all the lights on chicken wire found a way to trip the GFI's. I unplugged the SSRs to the flag and ran the show without.

  After the season, I'm going to rethink the flag build to be more weather friendly. Maybe use rope lights next year....

plastic net from home depo works good as it is non conductive. Thats what our singing female santa is made of.

RJ

I use the same plastic net for the "HomeMade" netlights we put on the hedge.
Works great.