Kitchen light trips pool pump

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brantmacga

brantmacga

Señor Member
Location
Georgia
Occupation
Former Child
Had a weird one yesterday guys.

Sent a guy to a house on the market to make repairs from a HI report. Turning on the fluorescent kitchen light switch tripped the GFCI in the main feeding the pool panel.

I went out and opened the panel cover; kitchen light circuit breaker is directly across from the 30/2 ITE GFI breaker, and it falls off the bus. I replaced the 20/1 breaker and the problem went away.

Customer calls this morning and said it happened again. I went back out, moved the 20/1 circuit lower on the panelboard to get it away from the GFCI, still trips.

I replaced the 30/2 GFI with a standard breaker, and added a GFCI for the pump in the pool panel (the lighting circuit in the pool panel had its own GFI breaker). Problem went away again. I stayed for awhile toggling the switch repeatedly and it never came back.

Also, I visually traced the 10/4 tray cable from the main panel to the pool panel to make sure nothing was tapped off it.

30/2 was the only GFI in the panel; I chalked it up to the combination of an old magnetic ballast and an old GFI breaker, beyond that any other thoughts?


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It would have been neat if you had left the old GFCI breaker and rebuilt the light with a T8 ballast and then seen what happened. I do know from experience GFCI's don't always like T12 ballasts on their load side but I hadn't ever seen a T12 affect a gfci on a whole different circuit.

I agree that AFCI's do all kinds of crazy stuff. I once seen a new fancy treadmill that was leaking 0.1 amps of current on a ground prong trip every AFCI in the panel when the customer tried to use it. Another time at my house I only half flipped my bedroom light switch in a sleepy daze and so it started arcing a little inside the switch. That caused the built in AFCI in a small portable space heater on an entirely different circuit to pop.
 
Old GFCI breaker that is subject to line side faults/fluctuations in power? Maybe rated (or not) for reverse feed so line side problems are seen as load side? I assume the pool circuit neutral is to the breaker and pigtail is to the buss?

Did you try a newer GFI breaker, or straight delete it for GFCI receptacle at the pump?
 
KyleFowler said:
....I hadn't ever seen a T12 affect a gfci on a whole different circuit.
Click to expand...

I haven't either.

However, I've posted numerous times about my experience at a big box pet store having a modern T8 instant start ballast trip seven different circuit GFCI breakers that were in the same panel as the dedicated circuit that fed the display with the ballast. I replaced the Advance ballast with a different brand and the nuisance tripping ceased.
 
JFletcher said:
Old GFCI breaker that is subject to line side faults/fluctuations in power? Maybe rated (or not) for reverse feed so line side problems are seen as load side? I assume the pool circuit neutral is to the breaker and pigtail is to the buss?

Did you try a newer GFI breaker, or straight delete it for GFCI receptacle at the pump?
Click to expand...

I installed a new QO GFI breaker at the pool panel.


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