My 30A GFI breaker wouldn't reset, even w/ no load

Hey all,

This problem got fixed but not without a $75 electrician visit and a 2 day delay on brewing my Belgian Quad.

For background info, instead of the spa panel, I had an electrician install a 50 A panel in my garage and I put in a 30 A GFI breaker for my kal panel. This gave me some extra outlets for my vent fan, etc. Everything was great and I had used the system for about 4 batches.

Went to brew this last time and just as I was ready to start heating the strike water, the gfi tripped. I started troubleshooting the kal control panel but fortunately, before trying anything extreme, I unplugged it from the wall mounted outlet and the GFI still wouldn't reset, even without anything plugged in at all.

I assumed the breaker must be bad. Fortunately for me, this $80 part was exchanged for me at no cost by my electrical supply place where I bought it originally. (there was an extra hour+ of driving to their other location where they had the last one in stock, but I digress...)

Got the brand new GFI installed and.....drumroll...exact same problem. It absolutely refused to reset, even without anything connected.

I gave up and called an electrician, who couldn't make it for 2 days.

When he showed up, he assumed bad breaker but I told him how I had just gone through the process of obtaining and installing a replacement.

Then, he simply loostened the screws on the clamp which holds the orange cable feeding power to the outlet for the brewery.

Worked like a champ.

$75 and a ton of hassle for an over-tightened cable clamp.


Thought this was worth sharing for others like me who have just enough confidence to get into these situations but not enough knowledge or experience to troubleshoot. I think I uploaded a picture of the panel in another thread but I will link it here for reference.

Wow. Lesson learned!!!
I hope he gave you a lot of advice too.

Would this go for for terminal screw connections also? I always thought tight was good. 😜

I must have missed something. Why did loosening the clamp solve the problem? The way I interpret the solution makes me think there is a short there for some reason?

If all he did was loosen a cable clamp to clear the problem, it is possible the clamp had damaged the insulation one or more wires in the cable.

To be clear, there is a metal clamp immediately above the 220v outlet, meant to hold the wire in position. It is like 2 half circles that pull together when tightened to clamp the cable. Those are the 2 screws he loostened.

So should I remove/replace the wire completely?

I have plenty of extra since the pirate electrician that did the install made me buy 30' of the stuff for a 2' run. It does make sense that if over tightening caused a short, simply loostening it wouldn't repair any damage that was done.

Then again, maybe it has something to do with resistance and how the GFI breakers work? Maybe it isnt damaged but was just squeezed out of its shape enough that it affected the GFI? Hmm....doubtful. I should probably replace it.

It just seems like a clamp being too tight isn't the source of the issue. If you can swap the wiring out that easily I would. JMO.

kopper said:

It just seems like a clamp being too tight isn't the source of the issue. If you can swap the wiring out that easily I would. JMO.

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Agreed.

Let's say you over tightened the connector (damaging the insulation or the insulation got nicked somehow.) for the 10ga. wire initially, just enough to allow some leakage from one of the hot conductors. It wouldn't hurt to replace the cable, especially since you said you've got about 27' left over. As a personnal preference, leave a little more slack in that wire too. Good luck and make sure you kill power to your "sub panel" before you work on it. Better safe than sorry. I overtightened one while the circuit was live and got a nice light show!

That clamp is called a romex clamp, and your problem is not fixed by loosening the clamp. When that clamp was originally over-tightened the sharp metal edges on it cut through the insulation and grounded-out either your hot or your neutral. When your electrician loosened the clamp he broke that short to ground, but the problem still exists and is a serious safety issue. I can't believe your electrician didn't mention this to you because this is a pretty easy issue to troubleshoot. Replace that run of wire, don't over-tighten the clamp, and you're good.

Dave1096 said:

That clamp is called a romex clamp, and your problem is not fixed by loosening the clamp. When that clamp was originally over-tightened the sharp metal edges on it cut through the insulation and grounded-out either your hot or your neutral. When your electrician loosened the clamp he broke that short to ground, but the problem still exists and is a serious safety issue. I can't believe your electrician didn't mention this to you because this is a pretty easy issue to troubleshoot. Replace that run of wire, don't over-tighten the clamp, and you're good.

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Trut so pure.
Looks like some damage was done to the wire insulation. In a high load situation this could cause arcing. Arcing lights fires. Bad bad bad.

Oh. and ground fault won't always protect from arcing. Arc fault breakers do that but are only required in bedrooms.
I guess that's because that's where all the sparks are?

Dave1096 said:

That clamp is called a romex clamp, and your problem is not fixed by loosening the clamp. When that clamp was originally over-tightened the sharp metal edges on it cut through the insulation and grounded-out either your hot or your neutral. When your electrician loosened the clamp he broke that short to ground, but the problem still exists and is a serious safety issue. I can't believe your electrician didn't mention this to you because this is a pretty easy issue to troubleshoot. Replace that run of wire, don't over-tighten the clamp, and you're good.

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Wanted to follow-up. I did replace the orange wire to the 30A outlet. Afterwards, I peeled-back the insulation where the romex clamp had pinched it to see and of course Dave1096 was absolutely correct. The neutral had pinched through the insulation and was grounding to the romex clamp.

Would this have started a house fire? I'm glad I will never know.

Thanks for the fast feedback guys.

NewBrewB said:

Wanted to follow-up. I did replace the orange wire to the 30A outlet. Afterwards, I peeled-back the insulation where the romex clamp had pinched it to see and of course Dave1096 was absolutely correct. The neutral had pinched through the insulation and was grounding to the romex clamp.

Would this have started a house fire? I'm glad I will never know.

Thanks for the fast feedback guys.

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No problem. I'm just glad you got a serious safety issue taken care of. To answer your question: Would it have started a house fire? Possibly. Electrical fires are typically caused by overheating of high-resistance connections (loose or broken connections). Even though the copper in the neutral wire wasn't physically touching the metal anymore once you loosened the clamp it was still close enough for the energy to jump through the air (arc) if there was enough potential there. Just as Spiny-Norman said, the insulation between the neutral and the grounded metal being compromised could easily have lead to arcing...which could easily have lead to a fire. Good work by you getting this taken care of. I would fire my electrician, though, if I were you.

Dave1096 said:

Good work by you getting this taken care of. I would fire my electrician, though, if I were you.

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I couldn't agree more. He made an extremely incompetent decision to just loosen the clamp and walk away. It should have been obvious to him that some insulation must have been compromised if the GFCI was tripping before but not after loosening the clamp.