AFCI for Pool Cover Circuit?

[Jon456]

Property owner tried to open his pool cover and the breaker kept tripping. He asked me to investigate. I believe there was simply too much load being put on the motor (due to corrosion and the cover being out of alignment): after I manually rotated the cover shaft about 90 deg, the cover opened and closed without tripping the breaker. I advised the owner to have the cover installation company come out and service the cover system.

But what I thought was odd about the setup was that the breaker for the cover circuit appears to be a 15A AFCI. I would have expected a 20A GFCI. Could this be contributing to the problem?

 

[mopowr steve]

I believe you're right, the installer must have accidentally put in the wrong breaker.
Unless it's feeding more than the cover, say one of the circuits required to have AFCI. Even still there would have to be a GFCI recept the cover system plugs into.

 

[pjholguin]

Maybe the installer couldn't get a GFCI(trips @4-6mA) to work and used an AFCI(trips @~75 MA)....JAT :slaphead:

Property owner tried to open his pool cover and the breaker kept tripping. He asked me to investigate. I believe there was simply too much load being put on the motor (due to corrosion and the cover being out of alignment): after I manually rotated the cover shaft about 90 deg, the cover opened and closed without tripping the breaker. I advised the owner to have the cover installation company come out and service the cover system.

But what I thought was odd about the setup was that the breaker for the cover circuit appears to be a 15A AFCI. I would have expected a 20A GFCI. Could this be contributing to the problem?

 

[FionaZuppa]

sounds like wrong breaker...... properly working gear & wiring should not trip the GFI. the tripping fault current rating of the breaker, be it AF of GF, should not be the reason why the breaker was tripping.

why exactly was the AF tripping?? too much load?

 

[Jon456]

sounds like wrong breaker...... properly working gear & wiring should not trip the GFI. the tripping fault current rating of the breaker, be it AF of GF, should not be the reason why the breaker was tripping.

why exactly was the AF tripping?? too much load?

At this point, I don't know the exact cause of the tripping as I only have circumstantial evidence.

When I first tried activating the cover switch, the breaker tripped twice (just as it had for the homeowner). After that, I rotated the pool cover storage spool manually about 90 degrees so I could get access to a bolt to decouple the gear motor's output shaft from the spool. I wanted to try operating the motor with no load. On a whim, I tried activating the cover switch again before removing the bolt and the cover began operating normally.

So my guess is that the physical cover mechanism was slightly frozen due to prolonged inactivity and that additional start-up load on the motor was enough to trip the breaker. I also noted that the cross bar that pulls the end of the cover was out of alignment (not square to the pool cover's tracks). This would also added to the load on the motor.

Since the cover is now opening and closing, it's more difficult to troubleshoot the cause of the tripping. In any case, since the cover mechanism is out-of-whack and needs adjustment anyway, I recommended that the owner have the cover installation company service the system. If the breaker trips again at a later date, at least we will have eliminated the binding issues.