GE Spa Panel Breaker

I've seen a lot of people recommend the GE Spa panel as an inexpensive 50 amp GFI. Does anybody know if this breaker will fit in a Square D Homeline panel?

It will not. You can get a homeline spa panel though. I have one.

Drats... Looks the the cheapest option for me is to feed the GE panel from a regular 50A breaker in my load center.

That works too a 50A 2pole should be $15 or less.

sdugre said:

Drats... Looks the the cheapest option for me is to feed the GE panel from a regular 50A breaker in my load center.

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If you go this route make sure you have 8/3 or 8/4 (depends on if you need 120V service) wire to run to the panel, and any plugs or connectors between the two need to be rated for 50A. If you don't need all 50A you can use a regular 30A breaker in the load center and #10 wire. I just went through this problem. Was much cheaper to wire the spa box for 30A and use the built in 50A gfci for ground fault protection only (uses the 30A breaker in the main panel for over current protection).

You can typically get high ampacity GFCI breakers that will fit in your panel, but they are usually much more expensive than putting the regular 50 amp breaker in the panel and then adding the external Spa panel that contains the GFCI breakers.

Thats what it looks like. The cheapest I can find a square D 50A GFCI is close to $100, so I'll be going with the $50 GE spa panel and a $9 regular 50A breaker.

My plan is to mount this exact spa panel below the breaker panel. I will feed the 50a into the spa panel, then retrofit an outlet directly into the spa panel enclosure or onto the side of it. This would be almost like a sub panel. Do you guys see any problem with this?

I am also wondering how to test the GFI? Do you guys trust the "test" button on the breaker itself?

Your plan looks good to me. I hadn't thought about mounting the outlet directly on the panel.

Regarding the test button on the gfci, it just shunts a small amount of current around the sensing current transformer, which is exactly what would happen if there was a ground fault. I trust the test button.

McCuckerson said:

My plan is to mount this exact spa panel below the breaker panel. I will feed the 50a into the spa panel, then retrofit an outlet directly into the spa panel enclosure or onto the side of it. This would be almost like a sub panel. Do you guys see any problem with this?

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Nope. I helped a guy in Chapel Hill do this very thing. He mounted a 30A dryer plug in his spa panel where he can plug in his control panel.