enireh
Senior Member
- Location
- Canyon Lake,TX
I have a 220 volt heater with thermostat in green house on a 220 outlet with ground wire. The breaker is two pole 20 GFCI and it trips after about five hours of the heater operating
two pole 20 GFCI breaker
- Thread starter enireh
- Start date
- Status
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
Check breaker size vs heater amps. Check for poor connections at the CB. Greenhouse is high moisture. Condensation problems?
enireh
Senior Member
- Location
- Canyon Lake,TX
JFletcher
Senior Member
- Location
- Williamsburg, VA
Take an amperage reading from the breakers, make sure this is a dedicated circuit. A 20A 240V breaker is only good for about 3800W of heating load. I wouldnt think condensation would be a problem on a heater that has been running for hours, tho when it's off, it could be a dripping mess. What make/model of heater?
- Occupation
- Licensed Electrician
What something else? It's either a fault or an overload that's tripping the breaker.
ptonsparky
Tom
- Occupation
- EC - retired
I have had problems with the internal parts of a CB. Usually older existing installs but rarely a new. You would need to take a voltage drop reading across the line to load contacts of the breaker with a good meter. Standard wiggy won't get it.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
What have you checked so far?
Is it new or is it something that has been there and just recently started having this problem?
High resistance connection somewhere could take time to develop enough leakage to trip on ground fault, but needs to start all over after cooling down. If that is the case it likely will become more frequent as time goes on and things deteriorate even more.
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