Rims Help. GFCI

I Just got my new electric system set up and am having problems with the Gfci i just installed. It ran fine with the 50amp breaker before and added the 50amp gfci. Apparently i am having a ground fault? Is this correct?

It trips when i plug in my bcs, also trips when i flip both of my contactors. It trips when i flip the breakers on in my stand. Not sure where to start diagnosing it.

Any quick tips on how to solve this would help.

Check the red wire.

Does the gfi ever hold? Try turning it on with nothing plugged in. If it trips, the problem isnt in your cp. If it holds, plug in your cp with everything off. If it holds, start turning things on one at a time till it trips. When you turn something on and it trips, you pretty much found the problem. Isolate the problem and check the wiring to see what looks wrong.

Gfi holds with 2 of the 220 breakers on, not the 110 and not the other 220. I have one of the hot wires off the SSR going to my led light, would the SSR leak power and cause this? I disconnected that and it doesnt pop. Then i took the wire and touched it back to the ssr, it worked untill i tapped it on there a few times then pop.

Also would the contactors cause it to pop?

I might just have to put the old breaker back in! i opened up a can of red worms with this one.

Bobby i checked all the red wires and they are still red.

I better come back to it with more patients ugh

thinking out loud here but would it matter to the gfi if i am running some things off 120 and some of 240 and one of the legs is pulling more?

Whenever i troubleshoot, i start with a breaker that holds and start adding things to it till it pops. If you start with a breaker thats holding, youre eventually going to add something that makes it pop. Over the internet, thats about the best i can do. If you can figure out what is making the breaker trip, you know where to look.

thanks for the help. I must really suck at wiring. narrowed a few down and just need to take things apart and tinker.

A lot of the time when you have a control box operating equipment, the controlling stuff will utilize the ground as a return or neutral. If you have used one of the hot legs from one of the 240 breakers as your control circuit that could be the the problem.

GFCIs monitor the current in the hot and the neutral wires on a circuit and trip if there is an imbalance between the two. So if for some reason your controlling items sends any current down the ol ground, then that =s a gfci trip.

Also since this is a new setup you can check any of the "hot" terminals to ground to see if you get anything other than OL on a meter. When I say any I am implying each terminal point to check before and after any contactors or break in the wire. That may help you trouble shoot.

One last thing, in most circumstances you can not have one gfci feeding to another gfci. Somehow they cause a disturbance in the hot and neutral and one will cause the other to trip. This is line and load specific on gfci breakers and recepticals. So if you have a gfci breaker feeding a gfci outlet and get trips, this could also be your cause.

Thats really all it is. You just have to narrow it down and eliminate things. Theres a lot of things in that cp that could cause a gfi to trip. Without actually sticking my sniffer in the cp, i'd just say to work your way through the cp to figure out whats making the breaker trip

Facinerous said:

One last thing, in most circumstances you can not have one gfci feeding to another gfci. Somehow they cause a disturbance in the hot and neutral and one will cause the other to trip. This is line and load specific on gfci breakers and recepticals. So if you have a gfci breaker feeding a gfci outlet and get trips, this could also be your cause.

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Do you have a source or explanation on this? I don't see any reason why this would be the case, if each GFCI is wired correctly and there are not any ground faults.

I do not know specificaly why a gfi will trip when it has another gfi on its load or monitered side. It does have something to do with the monitering equipment, which involves a cti. I did a quick google search and could not find the reason why, but I did find a lot of people posing gfi trip questions with this setup being the culprit.

Modern GFCI's not only monitor the 60 Hz current balance. They also launch a 120Hz signal and monitor that. I'm guessing that with two sources of 120 Hz on the same circuit there could be a problem but I haven't done any analysis that would explain why.