gfci protection for 220v 3 wire spa.

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blacknumber4

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I recently. wired a spa that is a single phase 3 wire spa there is no location for the neutral to land on the spa. How do i GFCI protect it? The spa only works when connected to a standard 2 pole breaker if I hook it up to a 2 pole GFCI breaker, it trips. There is no lighting on this spa so I do not see the reason for a neutral however the GFCI breaker needs neutral to work correctly. Is it ok to have the spa connected to a standard breaker at this point
 
The gfci breaker does not need a load side neutral to be effective. Wire the breaker neutral to the neutral bar and that's it. If you install the breaker near the tub you will need to pull a neutral at that point so it may be best to install the gfci at the main panel rather than the disco
 
Maybe the breaker trips because there is a ground fault in the SPA and it is just doing what it is supposed to do. That is not a good thing to use a non GFCI breaker in that situation and could mean high risk of electrocuting someone.
 
Maybe the dp gfci did not have its neutral wired from the breaker to the neutral bar. That would also make it trip
 
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I hooked the spa up on a standard 50 amp breaker and everything worked fine. I believe the gfi breaker is doing it's job as I have replaced the gfi breaker with a new gfi breaker to rule out a defective breaker with the same results. Breaker trips. I believe there is a problem with the spa's internal wiring. The guy bought it used and I do not know if it had been on a gfci circuit in the first place. Thank you all for your comments.
 
blacknumber4 said:
I hooked the spa up on a standard 50 amp breaker and everything worked fine. I believe the gfi breaker is doing it's job as I have replaced the gfi breaker with a new gfi breaker to rule out a defective breaker with the same results. Breaker trips. I believe there is a problem with the spa's internal wiring. The guy bought it used and I do not know if it had been on a gfci circuit in the first place. Thank you all for your comments.
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Used answers a lot of maybes.
 
blacknumber4 said:
I hooked the spa up on a standard 50 amp breaker and everything worked fine. I believe the gfi breaker is doing it's job as I have replaced the gfi breaker with a new gfi breaker to rule out a defective breaker with the same results. Breaker trips. I believe there is a problem with the spa's internal wiring. The guy bought it used and I do not know if it had been on a gfci circuit in the first place. Thank you all for your comments.
Click to expand...
I would suggest checking the heating element first, seems to be about the most common failed component that shows up as tripping GFCI issues. No megger to test it with, unhook and isolate both leads to the heat element and then see if GFCI holds, if it does the chances of element with a problem go up to 99.99%.
 
kwired said:
I would suggest checking the heating element first, seems to be about the most common failed component that shows up as tripping GFCI issues. No megger to test it with, unhook and isolate both leads to the heat element and then see if GFCI holds, if it does the chances of element with a problem go up to 99.99%.
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Agree! Or disconnect power, remove leads from heater and check to see if you have continuity between each terminal and casing of water heater if you do --- bad element. As long as there is water in the system.
 
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