GFCI Breaker

seattle_sparky

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.

mdshunk

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.

seattle_sparky

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.

Speedy Petey

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?

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seattle_sparky

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.

Speedy Petey

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

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.

mdshunk

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

sparkysteve

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

RobertWilber

my kind of guys ...

TAMP

What About Not Having A Load On The Receptacles?

stars13bars2

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.

wildwood

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

hanapaa

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

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

luckyshadow

wildwood is dead on the money !
They do make a 12/4 romex
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

Speedy Petey

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

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05reverb

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.

Magnettica

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.

Speedy Petey

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

http://www.biblehelp.org/images/burning%20house.jpg

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