Fountain pump tripping GFCI

Status
Not open for further replies.
S

sfav8r

Senior Member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area
We just had a call where one leg from the POCO went dead. We advised the client of the problem and POCO came and repaired the midspan tap. Everything works fine, but now the fountain pump trips the GFCI after about 3-5 minutes of operation...This did not previously happen. I figured perhaps some noise on the line when the connection was loose originally, may have damaged the GFCI, but a new GFCI does the same thing.

It seems unlikely that a loos tap on one leg would damage a pump. I suppose that a high resistance on that leg could have had the pump running on low voltage and now the insulation on the sindings is marginal...any thoughts about the likelyhood of that or suggestions of what else it could be.

We're going to change the pump, I'm just curious what may have caused it.

Thanks
 
If Poco opened a neutral it could have put a high voltage 240 ish across the pump circuit damaging the insulation. Most likely what happen from evidence presented.
 
It was one leg, not the neutral. Of course it's possible that that was the condition when we measured it and that the neutral was also loose but was not measurable at the time we were there.
 
The short summary is, whatever did or didn't happen, you can't prove it. Now you need a new fountain pump. Might try a new GFCI first, unless you can megger the pump from the cord's baldes.

Could be pure coincidence too. Just like the lady that blamed me for her adding machine that quit working when all I was doing was changing fluorescent lamps near her desk.
 
sfav8r said:
It was one leg, not the neutral. Of course it's possible that that was the condition when we measured it and that the neutral was also loose but was not measurable at the time we were there.
Click to expand...

And if you lost one leg then the unbalanced load was trying to go through the neutral especially if the leg you lost wasn't the one feeding the pump.

Funny how those things happen, huh Marc?:grin:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top