# GFCI breaker



## seattle_sparky (Jan 28, 2006)

I'm helping my foreman rewire his house and find myself having to clean up his messes! He ran a 12/3 to from the panel to the bathroom and landed each ckt in its own recp. while sharing neutrals. At the pnl he landed each ckt on its own GFCI ckt bkr. The load neutral was spliced in the pnl and taken to each bkr whil the pnl neutral ( the coily one that comes attached to the bkr) attaches straight to the neutral bus bar. When i turned either of the bkrs on they tripped. I isolated the neutral in the 12/3 to one bkr and it worked. I tried the other bkr the same way and it worked also. So apparently the two GFCI bkrs cannot share a neutral. I was just wondering if this had something to do with the current monitoring properties of the GFCI between the ungrounded and the grounded wire. since no load ( that I could discern) was one either recp. I can't imagine a current induced on the neutral. any ideas. Oh, I'm not sure why he wanted two ckts in the bathroom. It's a pretty small one level house. thanks.


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## mdshunk (Mar 13, 2005)

What kind of outfit are you working for? Sorry so blunt, but seriously? GFCI breakers have been out since the early 80's. It's been common knowledge in our trade since that time that you can't protect a multiwire circuit with two GFCI single pole breakers. Your options are to use a 2 pole GFCI breaker, or use two regular breakers and two GFCI receptacles or dead front GFCI's at the bathroom end of that multiwire cable. Since you say that this 12-3 ends in two receptacles, put in regular breakers and put in two GFCI receptacles. Point of use resettability is more desirable anyhow, in my opinion. 

The single pole GFCI breaker compares the current "leaving" on the hot with the current "returning" on the netural. With a neutral common to both the black and red wires, neither GFCI breaker know's what the heck's going on. Hence, the trip. Same principal with the AFCI breakers. 

Holy cow.


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## seattle_sparky (Jan 28, 2006)

thanks for the info, just so you know I'm a 5th year appr. with mostly large commercial and industrial experience. My foreman's only excuse i can think of is that he's from alaska. I knew you couldn't put two circuits on one GFCI bkr but wasn't sure exaclty why.I'm used to GFCI recps anyhow. thanks again for the info.


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## Speedy Petey (Sep 30, 2003)

Hey, let him make his mistakes. He'll find them later. It's his house. 

If you really want to be an upstanding guy then tell him about them, don't fix them for him. He'll have to learn from his own mistakes....unfortunately.
Actually, this is a scary case of learning from one's mistakes. I thought we were supposed to know this stuff before doing it? :help:


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## seattle_sparky (Jan 28, 2006)

hey thanks there speedy pete, I thought checkin out this guys work and preventing him from burning down his house was being an upstanding guy, but hey what do i know. thanks again.


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## Speedy Petey (Sep 30, 2003)

You know this is not a case of a mistake burning down a house. 
Sorry if I was as blunt as Marc and agreed with him. 
Is this not what you wanted to hear. Tell us what advice you want to hear so we can oblige. 

You are the one complaining that the foreman, who is supposed to be more knowledgable than you, is inept. 

If you were just venting that's fine, but if you don't want opinions like our don't post the doings of unqualified journeyman workers.

BTW - You can use a two-pole GFCB with a shared neutral multi-wire circuit.


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## Sparkielectric (Feb 4, 2006)

You can not share neutrals on GFCI Circuits. The only way this circuit would work is to install seperate GFCI Outlets at each of the outlets served.


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## mdshunk (Mar 13, 2005)

Sparkielectric said:


> You can not share neutrals on GFCI Circuits. The only way this circuit would work is to install seperate GFCI Outlets at each of the outlets served.


Not true. You can use a 2 pole GFCI breaker also, if you choose. You just can't use two, 1 pole breakers.


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## sparkysteve (Jan 27, 2006)

:jester: I wouldn't say anyting and let him find out that it won't work after drywall is hung.


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## RobertWilber (Mar 5, 2006)

my kind of guys ...


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## TAMP (Mar 14, 2006)

What About Not Having A Load On The Receptacles?


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## stars13bars2 (Feb 13, 2005)

If you don't have a load on the receptacles I guess you have just wasted money on the wire and breaker(s) that you installed.


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## wildwood (Mar 31, 2006)

don't forget that you can buy #12-4 (with 2 neutrals) the next time you have a project like this. also, there is no need for the gfi breakers in the panel when you have gfi's in the bathroom and you will save a lot of money by not using the breakers. like the other gentleman said, i would much rather reset the gfi in the bathroom than in the basement when i'm fresh out of the shower. good luck dude, ak


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## hanapaa (May 12, 2006)

alright i'll try the 12-4 the next time. 
it will work fine with my wire stretcher tool.:laughing: 
if in doubt add gfi's all over the house:laughing: :thumbup:

just got home from work.
don't mine me, just being humerous. 
especially after working with some apprentices.
it's like a tharapy.


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## luckyshadow (Jun 18, 2005)

hanapaa said:


> alright i'll try the 12-4 the next time.
> it will work fine with my wire stretcher tool.:laughing:
> if in doubt add gfi's all over the house:laughing: :thumbup:


wildwood is dead on the money ! :thumbsup: 
They do make a 12/4 romex:thumbup: 
It is referred to as 12-2-2 it contains a black conductor, a red conductor, a white conductor , and a white with red stripe conductor, plus the ground. Home Depot even carries it


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## Speedy Petey (Sep 30, 2003)

Ok, but why does he need 12/2/2?


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## 05reverb (Aug 14, 2008)

I'm curious about a similar situation, I'm building my house soon, and would like to feed a subpanel with a 50 amp GFCI double pole breaker, and that would feed all my ground fault circuits for the house. I'm thinking it would work, just want to double check before, cause I hate those ugly GFCI plugs.


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## Magnettica (Dec 19, 2006)

I wouldn't suggest protecting an entire panel with GFCI protection. I don't know of anyone that does that, nor have I ever seen that done. If you don't like the way the GFCI receptacles look like then I would suggest GFCI circuit breakers for each of your individual branch circuits requiring such protection.


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## Speedy Petey (Sep 30, 2003)

Yeah, no way I'd do that or suggest it to a customer. The only time I have done this was for a pool panel and I was not happy doing it. 

What is so bad about GFI receptacles? Most are all monochrome. The red and black buttons are old school.


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## MALCO.New.York (Feb 27, 2008)

Speedy Petey said:


> Hey, let him make his mistakes. He'll find them later. It's his house.
> 
> If you really want to be an upstanding guy then tell him about them, don't fix them for him. He'll have to learn from his own mistakes....unfortunately.
> Actually, this is a scary case of learning from one's mistakes. I thought we were supposed to know this stuff before doing it? :help:











http://www.biblehelp.org/images/burning house.jpg


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## 05reverb (Aug 14, 2008)

Speedy Petey said:


> Yeah, no way I'd do that or suggest it to a customer. The only time I have done this was for a pool panel and I was not happy doing it.
> 
> What is so bad about GFI receptacles? Most are all monochrome. The red and black buttons are old school.


I don't see the difference at all, your 50 amp GFCI would be in the main panel protecting the whole subpanel that is only for GFCI circuits, Then regular individual breakers would be in the sub panel to protect the circuits for amp draw. Even if the GFCI is 50 amps, It still detects the .05amp that is out of balance, as a regular 15amp GFCI does. So I don't see what the problem is, but please let me know if there is something I don't see wrong with this. And I know I could put in single GFCI breakers for every GFCI circuit but it would be alot more expensive than buying just one big GFCI and subpanel. As for GFCI plugs, I hate them, they are ugly, don't match other plugs, they wear out faster than breaker, I just don't want them in my house.


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## bwalley (Jan 7, 2009)

05reverb said:


> I don't see the difference at all, your 50 amp GFCI would be in the main panel protecting the whole subpanel that is only for GFCI circuits, Then regular individual breakers would be in the sub panel to protect the circuits for amp draw. Even if the GFCI is 50 amps, It still detects the .05amp that is out of balance, as a regular 15amp GFCI does. So I don't see what the problem is, but please let me know if there is something I don't see wrong with this. And I know I could put in single GFCI breakers for every GFCI circuit but it would be alot more expensive than buying just one big GFCI and subpanel. As for GFCI plugs, I hate them, they are ugly, don't match other plugs, they wear out faster than breaker, I just don't want them in my house.


Problem is when one circuit that is fed from the subpanel trips the GFCI main, it will kill everything in the panel.

It is your house though and it would work as long as NEC allows it.


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## 05reverb (Aug 14, 2008)

bwalley said:


> Problem is when one circuit that is fed from the subpanel trips the GFCI main, it will kill everything in the panel.
> 
> It is your house though and it would work as long as NEC allows it.


 that would not bother me at all, as I would only run 1 20amp circuit for 2 plugs next to the sink in the kitchen, 1 circuit for the bathroom plugs, and one circuit for the outside plugs. so even if it would shut all that off (wich will probably never happen) it would not be a problem. I'm in Canada, so those are the only circuits that is required to be GFCI protected, and I would check with local inspectors before doing it, But I can't imagine it being illegal, cause I'm pretty sure CEC only states that it needs to be GFCI protected, wich it would be.

If anybody see's anything wrong with this, please let me know.


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## Speedy Petey (Sep 30, 2003)

05reverb said:


> I don't see the difference at all, your 50 amp GFCI would be in the main panel protecting the whole subpanel that is only for GFCI circuits, Then regular individual breakers would be in the sub panel to protect the circuits for amp draw. Even if the GFCI is 50 amps, It still detects the .05amp that is out of balance, as a regular 15amp GFCI does. So I don't see what the problem is, but please let me know if there is something I don't see wrong with this. And I know I could put in single GFCI breakers for every GFCI circuit but it would be alot more expensive than buying just one big GFCI and subpanel. As for GFCI plugs, I hate them, they are ugly, don't match other plugs, they wear out faster than breaker, I just don't want them in my house.


First off, I never said it was bad code wise, wrong or illegal. Of course it will work, be safe and be code complaint. In MY *opinion*, it is a bad *design*, for the exact reason bwally said. 

Do you want to loose all the GFI protected _receptacles_ in your house because of a fault in ONE of them? I would not. 
Same goes for a pool panel. I would not want to loose all my pumps because of a fault in a heater in the middle of the summer.
I'd MUCH rather have the local control over the test and rest functions.

Like I said, it is a design preference issue. I persoanlly have NO problem with GFI _receptacles_. They do NOT "wear out" faster than other _receptacles_. Most every one I have seen was spec grade, so obviously they are pretty tough. Yes, of course they fail on ocassion, but that is expected with this type of device.



You obviously know what you are a doing. DO what makes you comfortable. :thumbsup:


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## 05reverb (Aug 14, 2008)

Speedy Petey said:


> First off, I never said it was bad code wise, wrong or illegal. Of course it will work, be safe and be code complaint. In MY *opinion*, it is a bad *design*, for the exact reason bwally said.
> 
> Do you want to loose all the GFI protected _receptacles_ in your house because of a fault in ONE of them? I would not.
> Same goes for a pool panel. I would not want to loose all my pumps because of a fault in a heater in the middle of the summer.
> ...


ok, perfect, that is all i wanted to know, if it was safe and code compliant. now it is only preference issue, wich for me is no problem at all, cause my house will only have 2 kitchen counter plugs, 1 bathroom plug and 2 outside plug that is GFCI (i'm in canada, that's all that is required). so loosing these 5 plugs if something does happen (wich would only be if there is a ground fault or if i'm drawing more than 100amp from my subpanel) would not bother me at all.

Thanks for all the info speedy, that cleared up my question, cause I had never seen anyone doing it, now I know why, alot of people don't like the idea, but for me it's all good.


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