smittygouv30

Recipes 

Looks nice! Very clean build. Now to make great beer.

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Hop Rehab Electric Brewery

Keg 1: The Electric S'more Stout
Keg 2: Apfelwein
Keg 3: Pumpking clone
Keg 4: Two-hearted Ale clone

Primary: Lemongrass Wheat Kolsch
Secondary: Empty

Fordzilla

Recipes 

I'm wishing I hadn't bought mine from China. It's been a couple weeks now and I'm getting impatient. Next time I will just pay the few dollars extra.

__________________
Next Up -
Primary - wcarter1227's 15 min Pale Ale
Secondary - Hard Cider
Bottles - MysticMead's Irish Red Ale, Deception Cream Stout, Denny Conn's Boubon Vanilla Porter, English IPA
Kegs - Zombie Dust Clone

Puckhead

Recipes 

I ordered mine it took almost a month another
Friend ordered from the same guys lives 20 mins from me he got his in 4 days. Only positive I that is I've used mine, he's too busy to wire it up...

cwi

Recipes 

I think the GFCI discussion got muddled by the use of "cannot/will" where "shouldn't/can" would have been more appropriate, as was clarified later. Even my original 'could' would have read better as a 'may'.

That being said, using 2 GFCIs in series can cause issues, even when wired properly (for series). This can happen even when both GFCIs function properly when wired separately/in parallel. Several scenarios can cause this:

One GFCI has a current leakage lower than its trip threshold (or before its trip circuitry), and is wired downstream of a GFCI that has a trip threshold lower than the leakage (or the sum of leakages, if the upstream GFCI also has some 'post trip circuitry' leakage).

Any combination of the above resulting in a 'post trip circuitry' current leakage that exceeds the trip threshold of the upstream GFCI.

I have personally encountered this. I figured out which GFCI was problematic, and tossed it, even though it worked on its own. No sense in keeping something like that around. There could have been all kinds of reasons there was current leakage, none of them good.

These same issues can also be caused by faulty wiring external to the GFCI device as well, and this is a much more common cause.

raouliii

Recipes 

I agree with the rest of your post but I can't imagine why one would wire ANY receptacles in SERIES, much less a GFCI. Residential power distribution is strictly a parallel game. If any receptacle is wired in series with another receptacle, they share the voltage and most, if not all, appliances would not function.

Now that I think about it, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the terms being used. By "series", are we talking about a gfci attached, in parallel, to the LOAD side of an upstream gfci? If that's the case, then, in theory, there should still be no issues. Of course, if one of the gfcis is not functioning correctly, then all bets are off.

A gfci constantly compares the current in the LINE hot and neutral conductors. If that current is unequal by more than about 6mA then it trips. It is assumed that extra current is traveling to ground through some other path. The LOAD terminals simply extend that monitoring to downstream receptacles.

gar2376

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emjay - Did you ever post pics of your build? I read multiple times that you had something big planned, but never saw a post in this thread with the final product.

emjay

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How dare you hold me accountable?!

Ha, no. I scrapped the entire thing as I'm putting together an ebrewery and I figured I might as well integrate the fermentation control while I'm at it.

cwi

Recipes 

I may have (did) bastardized the terms a bit (a lot), but it was the best I could come up with, especially if you read it in the context of multiple GFCIs and subsequent upstream/downstream descriptors. I was hoping to avoid a 2 page explanation of line, load, losses, op amp summers, etc. When read in context of upstream/downstream it should make sense.

When plugging in his controller box built with a GFCI into the outlet (which may have been controller by a GFCI breaker), he was essentially wiring the downstream GFCI to the 'load' terminals of the upstream GFCI (my bastardized 'series'), instead wiring the downstream GFCI in a 'pigtail' fashion to the line terminals of the upstream GFCI (parallel).

I said as much, and more, in my previous post. There are occasionally small current leakages in outlets, and I would guess they may be even more common in GFCI outlets, especially on the line side. Different makes and ages of GFCIs have different trigger levels. I hear that newer ones actually have higher trigger levels than older ones, and this may have been done to help with false triggers of all sorts. I can't think of any other reason to raise the trigger level. I assume the speed/reliability of the circuitry increased, allowing them to safely raise the trigger level while maintaining safety factors.

Exactly, and that is why both the line and load losses (if any), from the downstream GFCI are added to any load losses (if any), from the upstream GFCI, which can trigger the upstream GFCI when a second GFCI is wired downstream.

Fordzilla

Recipes 

Has anyone exceeded the 10 Amp rating on this? I was planning on using a hair dryer for the heat on this, and I looked at it today and saw that it draws 15 Amps.

__________________
Next Up -
Primary - wcarter1227's 15 min Pale Ale
Secondary - Hard Cider
Bottles - MysticMead's Irish Red Ale, Deception Cream Stout, Denny Conn's Boubon Vanilla Porter, English IPA
Kegs - Zombie Dust Clone

Kingfish

Recipes 

Open the case on your unit (after unplugging it). Check the relays. They may be different than 10A. Mine are 15A. That said, a small space heater can be had for very cheap at walmart/target/big lots/kmart/etc.