utopeya
Active Member
So, I'm working on an automated electric brewery (using a bunch of the stuff I've learned from these boards), and I have some questions about GFCI protection for my 4500W brew kettle.
I'm brewing in an apartment, so I'll be plugging into my range receptacle for 240V power. As far as I can tell, I have a few options, each of which comes with some difficulties.
1. Buy a spa panel with a 50A GFCI breaker, and wire it up so I can plug into the range receptacle. My main concern here is cost, really. From what I've read, there's a lot of stuff you have to do to make sure this kind of setup is up to code.
2. Buy an inline GFCI. Again, cost is a concern. The only thing I've found that doesn't cost many hundreds of dollars is this: http://www.labsafety.com/User-Attachable-In-Line-GFCI_24536740/ , and I don't know whether 20A is beefy enough. 4500W/240V = 18.75A, but 4500W/220V = 20.45A.
3. Replace my 30A breaker with a GFCI one, like this: http://doitbest.com/Circuit+breakers-GE+Industrial+Dept-model-THQL1130GFP-doitbest-sku-519332.dib . This would actually be pretty easy--my main basement panel has one breaker that powers my apartment's sub panel, so I could just switch it off from the basement and swap breakers. My only question here is whether the GFCI will play nice with my electric range.
Thoughts? Other suggestions? I'm way deeper into this than I intended to get, so anything that might save me some money without getting me killed would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, one other concern: my range receptacle is the older three-prong kind, but I opened it up and there are actually four wires running to it. I'm assuming I'll need to switch to a four-wire setup for the GFCI to do what it's supposed to do--is this correct?
Thanks so much.
I'm brewing in an apartment, so I'll be plugging into my range receptacle for 240V power. As far as I can tell, I have a few options, each of which comes with some difficulties.
1. Buy a spa panel with a 50A GFCI breaker, and wire it up so I can plug into the range receptacle. My main concern here is cost, really. From what I've read, there's a lot of stuff you have to do to make sure this kind of setup is up to code.
2. Buy an inline GFCI. Again, cost is a concern. The only thing I've found that doesn't cost many hundreds of dollars is this: http://www.labsafety.com/User-Attachable-In-Line-GFCI_24536740/ , and I don't know whether 20A is beefy enough. 4500W/240V = 18.75A, but 4500W/220V = 20.45A.
3. Replace my 30A breaker with a GFCI one, like this: http://doitbest.com/Circuit+breakers-GE+Industrial+Dept-model-THQL1130GFP-doitbest-sku-519332.dib . This would actually be pretty easy--my main basement panel has one breaker that powers my apartment's sub panel, so I could just switch it off from the basement and swap breakers. My only question here is whether the GFCI will play nice with my electric range.
Thoughts? Other suggestions? I'm way deeper into this than I intended to get, so anything that might save me some money without getting me killed would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, one other concern: my range receptacle is the older three-prong kind, but I opened it up and there are actually four wires running to it. I'm assuming I'll need to switch to a four-wire setup for the GFCI to do what it's supposed to do--is this correct?
Thanks so much.