Calling all electricians and other saavy electrical engineers HELP!!!!

Today was to be the first AG in my "long time coming" all electric HERMS rig in the basement. I'm running it through a 2 pole 30amp 10ka 240 feed backed with a Square D 30amp GFCI panel breaker. The feed goes straight into my control panel and runs all my electrical needs. Here's a picture of my rig and more importanly a pic of the control box.



The 2 pole switch on the lower left handles one hot leg of the 240 and splits it between my two electrical heater elements . The SSR and PID/temp controllers handle the other leg of the hot so I can completely disable any electricity to the heating elements(it's 20amp switch but I'm wondering if I really need this). The yellow plugs go to 2 march pumps. The pumps and PID's are all fused and all grounds including grounds on keggles terminate back to the panel through the electrical feed.

When I'm running my rig during the Mashing process I will have one Auber PID(nominal) two March pumps (1.4a) running and one 3500w 240v heater element. During the boil I have only one PID and one 3500w element running. My math says even under full load I should be drawing no more than 21-23amps.

So today after running the system for a couple hours(cleaning, sanitizing, Auto tuning, and then beginning my brew process, my GFI panel breaker tripped. I turned off all of the pumps, PIDS, neutralized the elements, and while my lead was still plugged into the outlet, it would not reset. I unplugged it from the wall, reset the breaker and it stayed. I plugged my plug back into the wall and it tripped. I felt for any heat and didn't feel any at all on my control panel or any of the cables. Once I did manage to get the breaker set and plugged back in, i turned on the two march pumps and the PID sans elements and it tripped again.

Now I've accepted defeat for today and I'm hoping that the many talented folks whom I've learned everything from may have some insight into how I may troubleshoot this out.

I want to get my first AG started so I can start to back up my ridiculous investment of time, money, and effort with a delicious beer.

On a lighter note, I'm starting my daughter young on identifying the various hops and their aromas



Flananuts

I have had problems with March pumps causing a GFCI to pop. I haven't dug deep into to it but I am suspecting that it is leaking some kind of current through the pump housing to the brewer chassis. If I removed the pumps from the circuit everything would be happy.

I got tired of dorking with it and made sure that the kettles and chassis were WELL grounded and took the GFCI out. It's not something I would recommend some one to do but, I personally don't have a problem with it on my rig.

CodeRage said:

I have had problems with March pumps causing a GFCI to pop. I haven't dug deep into to it but I am suspecting that it is leaking some kind of current through the pump housing to the brewer chassis. If I removed the pumps from the circuit everything would be happy.

I got tired of dorking with it and made sure that the kettles and chassis were WELL grounded and took the GFCI out. It's not something I would recommend some one to do but, I personally don't have a problem with it on my rig.

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I must ask; did you get the motors splashed and not know it?

If that's the case or even with a dry motor you should be able to find and read this fault with a digital meter, hot to frame in resistance or use the insulation breakdown reading test like the Fluke 87 or higher models have like a Fluke 88 (my next dream meter).
Sounds like a common March problem here or is it just me in distrust with March the more I read about them? For 1/25 hp only with shaft noise, sticking, low volume flow due to any head pressure that 1 /12 HP Little Giant pump needs to be looked into more. They will be on my next brewery build vs March 809 pumps. Bigger inlet on the Little Giant pumps the most important part of a pump.

I hear ya CodeRage, i've run a lot of equipment including 127' below San Francisco bay in the bottom of the tunnels to Alameda standing in 16" of saltwater hot splicing 480 volt sump pump motors.
This is not normal but again with proper gear plus a 30 year IBEW wireman. Neutrals will kill ya.

Thanks to both of you for the response and the suggestion. To make sure I have it right, I test the hot lead and the motor housing and look for voltage or is there a specific resistance method? I do have a digital meter however I've only used it for voltage and nothing else. I can't wait to figure this out so I can get back to brewing the beer I drink.

Flananuts

flananuts - First I want to say I think you may be creating the future top chef there. She looks like she actually likes the smell and not doing a Whooo-thats-stinks face.
As more benefits from hops become proven facts I'm just waiting for the hop flavored pancakes, BBQ rubs, etc.
I can't help on the rig problems, I'm a bare bones ghetto equipment brewer, but I do feel your frustration. Just have another homebrew and work on the problems when you get the time.
Best of luck.

flananuts said:

Thanks to both of you for the response and the suggestion. To make sure I have it right, I test the hot lead and the motor housing and look for voltage or is there a specific resistance method? I do have a digital meter however I've only used it for voltage and nothing else. I can't wait to figure this out so I can get back to brewing the beer I drink.

Flananuts

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Set your meter to measure resistance, the omega symbol, and measure the resistance between hit hot and ground, hot and chassis, neutral and ground, and neutral and chassis. It should read zero ohms.
**Make sure that the pump is disconnected from power, neutral, and ground before you do this test. You'll burn up your meter if you don't.

CodeRage, thanks! Unfortunately, my last meter met the same demise as you warned against. I'm glad you brought it up otherwise I would have likely burned out my current meter as well.

Funny that my daughter likes the smell of toasted barley,hops, and anything beer related. She takes her sisters diaper genie and other stuff for her "beer making machine." She even likes the taste of beer, the darker the better( and I stress taste)

Plug the pump into a gfi rec that is not on your rig and see what happens. I do not recommend using a 2pole 30 and splitting it to use 110v equipment. Leave the 220 for the elements and use a separate 110v line for the other stuff. The unbalanced load on the 2pole breaker when using 1 leg from the pump is probably causing your problem.

Thanks DemonCleaner. I had initially planned on running it that way but the folks here on the forum recommended that I do it this way. I'll post a reply on the outcome of the march pump test.

DemonCleaner said:

The unbalanced load on the 2pole breaker when using 1 leg from the pump is probably causing your problem.

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Yep. Motor = big inductive load = GFCI tripper. No good answer here.

Guys, what do you think about using an isolation transformer instead of a GFCI?

DemonCleaner said:

Plug the pump into a gfi rec that is not on your rig and see what happens. I do not recommend using a 2pole 30 and splitting it to use 110v equipment. Leave the 220 for the elements and use a separate 110v line for the other stuff. The unbalanced load on the 2pole breaker when using 1 leg from the pump is probably causing your problem.

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Shouldn't be a problem...

flananuts- You did run the neutral from your rig to the curly pigtail on the GFCI breaker and not the panel neutral bus, correct? If not then the GFCI can't account for that current and will pop.

I used a 220 and 110 circuit on mine initially and it made the problem worse, isolated it down to the pumps again.

pointing the finger at inductive loads is kind of an easy way out, and doesn't really apply. I've run my 1HP air compressor from a GFCI outlet with no issues. Not to mention blenders and food processors.

Though, if the motor windings are crap then it COULD cause the gfci to pop. I'll grab a megger and test my pumps this weekend.

CodeRage said:

pointing the finger at inductive loads is kind of an easy way out, and doesn't really apply.

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Sounds plausible to me.

To the OP:
1) do you have a non-GFCI breaker you could test with?
2) When, exactly, does the breaker trip? When you turn something on, or when you turn it off?

Your problem has nothing to do with inductive loads and is very easy to remedy. Sorry I didn't see your post earlier. You are causing an imbalance by using one of the legs of the 220 vac line for your 110 vac equipment. The 220 volt GFCI actually checks for equal current flow in both legs of the 220 volt line. If it detects that one leg is drawing more current it will trip. For the GFCI to work properly it needs a balanced 220 vac circuit. As one of the previous posters mentioned run your 110 vac equipment from a different 110v circuit and your GFI will work like a charm.

Sawdustguy said:

You are causing an imbalance by using one of the legs of the 220 vac line for your 110 vac equipment. The 220 volt GFCI actually checks for equal current flow in both legs of the 220 volt line. If it detects that one leg is drawing more current it will trip. For the GFCI to work properly it needs a balanced 220 vac circuit. As one of the previous posters mentioned run your 110 vac equipment from a different 110v circuit and your GFI will work like a charm.

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No. as long as it is a 120/240 2 pole and has it's own neutral (ie pigtail) you can split it. It will compare total current out to total current in, including what is returned on the dedicated neutral.

What is the part number on your gfci?

So the curly pigtail doesn't terminate with the panel neutral? It should be directly tied to the neutral that's coming back from the connection? I remember the instructions from Square D to have it terminate in the panel neutral. I'm totally happy to change it but I want to make sure I'm following your suggestion. It wouldn't be much of a change to wire in a seperate 110 to my pumps and PID's either.

I will post results from resistance test.

I'm sorry I wasn't very clear. Yes you connect the pig tail to the neutral bus on the breaker. But the neutral from the brew rig should go into the gfci, not the neutral bus. Is this how it is wired?

Hi there. I think I did but Ill need to pull the panel cover off and take a peak. Thanks again for all the advice. I'm itching to start brewing the beer I drink again

CodeRage said:

pointing the finger at inductive loads is kind of an easy way out, and doesn't really apply. I've run my 1HP air compressor from a GFCI outlet with no issues. Not to mention blenders and food processors.

Though, if the motor windings are crap then it COULD cause the gfci to pop. I'll grab a megger and test my pumps this weekend.

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I was leaving a megger out of this conversation as we used the big high voltage units testing 12KV runs and used on a found and good jobsite 2 HP single phase motor the megger went thru the varnished windings to ground.
This carbon tracked and made the windings go to ground when powered up again on 240 volts, hence wasted a motor. Like I posted above a good meter like a Fluke 87 with insulation resistance feature will pick up a grounding fault be is a slight leakage not enough to show up with the motor running on 120 volts.

There was a question posted about the use of a Little Giant 1/12 HP pump by another member app a week ago vs using March pumps. I never looked into the price of this Little Giant pump as another option for a pump.

CodeRage said:

No. as long as it is a 120/240 2 pole and has it's own neutral (ie pigtail) you can split it. It will compare total current out to total current in, including what is returned on the dedicated neutral.

What is the part number on your gfci?

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It depends on if he really wired neutral in properly.

Okay, so I did properly wire the breaker into the panel, both hot leads, neutral lead into the breaker and curly lead to neutral bar. Now to test resistance. My multimeter offers the following choices and I have no clue which one to choose.

200
2000
20k
200k
2000k

I look forward to hearing which one to choose? I will also be googling this as well

Update
I measured both pumps in the hot/ground hot/chassis and neutral/ground neutral/chassis and got no reading. The meter acted as if the leads weren't touching anything. I did also take a resistance measurement on the circuit and the pumps are 9.3 and 9.5 when measuring hot /neutral minus the 0.03 meter resistance itself.

Unless anyone else can suggest another test, I'm going to wire in a seperate line for the 110 and connect it through a seperate outlet. I would prefer not to do this but I'm past my rudimentary knowledge of electricity now.

Thanks

I betcha that fixes it. I have my fingers crossed for you.

Sawdustguy said:

I betcha that fixes it. I have my fingers crossed for you.

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I assumed a 240V GFCI looks for zero balance on all legs, summed. If so, this would allow the use of just one leg, wouldn't it? Not sure here.

So I wired in a seperate feed for my 110 needs. Now what do I do with the neutral on my 240v feed into the controller. Do I just cap it or tie it into the ground bar in the controller? Right now it's capped but I feel I just removed the value of the gfci breaker. What am I missing?

flananuts said:

So I wired in a seperate feed for my 110 needs. Now what do I do with the neutral on my 240v feed into the controller. Do I just cap it or tie it into the ground bar in the controller? Right now it's capped but I feel I just removed the value of the gfci breaker. What am I missing?

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Why did you disconnect it? All you did was run your 110 volt stuff to a different circuit.

flananuts said:

So I wired in a seperate feed for my 110 needs. Now what do I do with the neutral on my 240v feed into the controller. Do I just cap it or tie it into the ground bar in the controller? Right now it's capped but I feel I just removed the value of the gfci breaker. What am I missing?

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Cap it. DONT bond it to ground.
edit- DO leave it connected in your breaker panel. Cap it at the brew rig.

Put those pumps on a 110 GFCI receptacle, I am curious to see if the problem comes back.

Moving it off the gfci breaker doesn't fix anything, just works around the problem. regardless, like I said before, mine would trip the gfci for no reason. I still blame the pump (this was on a 240v split 2 pole and a 110v gfci wall outlet.)

Whatever you do! Don't cut the blue wire......Ok maybe I watch too much tv

LOL- I capped it and I do have a GFCI 110 near the wash basin in the basement so I'll use that one for the pumps and let you know if the issue comes back. On another note, I picked my 1st year cascade hop plant. I got about 8oz wet, which you can see from my picture is a full colander of pretty green cones. Thanks to SWMBO who assisted in picking them

Catch-22 said:

Whatever you do! Don't cut the blue wire......Ok maybe I watch too much tv

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LMFAO on that one thanks bro.

You should of seen what 12KV fused 125 amps does to pole fuses at night when 18 ton pigs each were cross phased internally by PG&E on their rebuilds on loan to us in an emergency to feed a shopping mall. Time was money to the mall. We worked around the clock installing and landing pri/sec on them. PG&E called ahead to the sub station "going on line". Yup sure did those fuses sounded like a 88 mm going off. Blasted the holders and vaporized them. Each pig burped 4-5 gallons of oil out the vents. talk about wattage or BTU's of instant energy, the sub station felt it big time as well the ground above the vaults jumped.

Wasn't the blue wire on M.A.S.H.?

flananuts said:

LOL- I capped it and I do have a GFCI 110 near the wash basin in the basement so I'll use that one for the pumps and let you know if the issue comes back. On another note, I picked my 1st year cascade hop plant. I got about 8oz wet, which you can see from my picture is a full colander of pretty green cones. Thanks to SWMBO who assisted in picking them

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Beautiful Hop cones!

CodeRage said:

Moving it off the gfci breaker doesn't fix anything, just works around the problem. regardless, like I said before, mine would trip the gfci for no reason. I still blame the pump (this was on a 240v split 2 pole and a 110v gfci wall outlet.)

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I agree with you CodeRage. I had this very thing happen to me and I could never make sense of it, but moving the 110V stuff off of one leg of the 220v line worked and the problem never came back. The 220v line was running my BIP filter. As soon as I connected an outdoor light to one of the legs, the GFCI started tripping. I don't understand why to this very day.

After reading this thread, I contacted the Square D rep (I am using a QO GFI breaker). This is the chain of dialogue:

Me: I am planning to use a 50Amp GFI breaker (QO250GFI) for a project in which the load will be split between 220V and 110V applications. Will the breaker trip if the load on the hot wires is not balanced. For example, 6-3 nm wire runs from the GFI breaker to a distribution block. From the distribution block, two hots and the ground go to power a 220V heat stick. Also, from the distribution block, the hots are separated to create two 110V circuits that share a common neutral and ground. Will this work?

Them: This will work as long as you run the neutral through the breaker. The breaker will not care which wires the current is on as long as it is present and current going to and from the load is equal within 5 mA.

Me: Will the GFI breaker be able to handle of a mix of loads, both resistive (heaters) and inductive (pumps)?

Them: A mix of loads is not a problem. Motors and length of wire will add to the ground fault leakage, but as long as it stays under the threhsold, it will be fine.


Me: Is there a way to predict this? Or is will I have to measure the leakage?

Them: Circuits are generally OK up to 250 ft. long if clean and dry. Underground or damp will increase leakage. Motors will increase leakage because of the magnet wire wound on a steel core. The only way to know what the leakage is would be to measure it as there are so many variables.


According to the manufacturer, splitting off 110V Circuits from 220V protected by a breaker should be fine.... What brand breakers are you guys using?

Mine's a square d QO 30 amp 120/240v 10ka gfi breaker in panel. It was fine until the motors ran for more than an hour and then it was tripping with only two march pumps (1.4a each) and a PID. I'm going to brew this weekend so I'll follow up if the pumps trip the 110 gfi outlet while brewing. At least if it does I can just switch plugs. Believe you me I do not want to have two separate feeds but I want to brew beer even more.

flananuts said:

Believe you me I do not want to have two separate feeds but I want to brew beer even more.

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Amen brother!

Quick update

I brewed my first AG on the electric rig. At first my gfi was tripping immediately which was definitely concerning. After the 4th reset it held stable. I did notice occasionally there was some noise coming from the breaker. However throughout my entire HERMS brew period and switching one heater off and another one off which could have caused some voltage differences across the two hot legs, it didn't tirp once. I'm not sure if the march pumps and PID's were in fact causing the problem but I do happen to like having it on a separate circuit.

Brew was successful. I hit my goal of 1.061 at 70% efficiency calculation. I mashed thinner since it was the first time running the system.

Recipe
9 lb two role pale malt
1 lb toasted malt
1 lb crystal 40L
1 lb 4oz Munich Malt

5 gallons strike water at 168 deg
Mash 70 minutes at 155 equated to 152 in middle of grain bed
2.5 gallons first runnings at 1.065
3.5 gallons split into two batch sparge
recirculated for vorlauf and drained
2 oz centenial hop pellets 8.7%AA boil
2 oz cascade leaf 8.7 AA 1 min post boil
OG post boil 1.061-1.064 in fermentor

Initial sweet wort taste was good with a huge cascade hop flavor up front which I hope will dial down during fermentation, cold crash, and aging.

On tap for tomorrow morning, 1st year backyard Cascade hop harvest anniversary ale.

Thanks again for your help.

FWIW, my experience is this:

I have a 50A GFCI circuit that I plug my rig into. It is then split (inside the rig) into 2 30A 240V and 1 15A 110V circuit. I wired my rig just like a normal subpanel. I run my pumps, pids, and a RIMS element off the 110V circuit and a 4500w element off of each of the 240V. (All proper gauge wire, etc.) I've never had an issue. I can verify that the GFCI works, as well (cross hot with ground and it trips - controlled experiment, don't try at home, etc.). And for BrewBeemer, yes, I had my copy of the NEC close by


Edit based on rest of thread so that noone else gets confused: on a GFCI, doing a continuity test between hot and ground will trip the GFCI, but will not trip a "normal" breaker/circuit. That's what I was talking about.

bakins said:

I can verify that the GFCI works, as well (cross hot with ground and it trips - controlled experiment, don't try at home, etc.).

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JFYI...any breaker would trip by doing this. Creating a ground fault like you did can produce an instantaneous fault current upwards of 9kA. Since a GFCI should trip around 5mA in order to protect life that experiment doesn't tell you much.

wihophead said:

JFYI...any breaker would trip by doing this. Creating a ground fault like you did can produce an instantaneous fault current upwards of 9kA. Since a GFCI should trip around 5mA in order to protect life that experiment doesn't tell you much.

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a 20kOhm resistor to ground would be a more appropriate test.

However, if you didn't get a big blue snapping flash and a gigantic pit in the material used to short it, the GFCI grabbed it before the thermal overload could.

CodeRage said:

a 20kOhm resistor to ground would be a more appropriate test.

However, if you didn't get a big blue snapping flash and a gigantic pit in the material used to short it, the GFCI grabbed it before the thermal overload could.

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In this case the magnetic trip would cause the trip not the thermal trip.....typical breakers have both

Edit: Shorting a circuit to find an unlabeled circuit is common place in industry...it usually doesn't cause much if any physical damage unless of coarse you are using GE breakers....LOL