My Neutral is stalling Brew Day

[April15Hater]

For once yeast isn't holding up my brewing.

It seems I'm having trouble with my neutral. This was my first dry run and when i flipped the switch on my spa panel it immediately tripped the breaker, however I could also hear the relay contacts. I have power in to a dpst relay w/ 110 coil. One side of the coil is 1 hot leg, the other side is neutral; each pole holds a hot leg. If I take the neutral off of the coil, it doesn't trip. Obviously, the relay doesn't close either. I'm kinda baffled at this point because I dont know how else to get a 110 circuit working without bridging the ground and neutral in my control panel which i think defeats the purpose of the gfci spa panel.

Any help is appreciated.

Joe

 

[doug293cz]

For once yeast isn't holding up my brewing.

It seems I'm having trouble with my neutral. This was my first dry run and when i flipped the switch on my spa panel it immediately tripped the breaker, however I could also hear the relay contacts. I have power in to a dpst relay w/ 110 coil. One side of the coil is 1 hot leg, the other side is neutral; each pole holds a hot leg. If I take the neutral off of the coil, it doesn't trip. Obviously, the relay doesn't close either. I'm kinda baffled at this point because I dont know how else to get a 110 circuit working without bridging the ground and neutral in my control panel which i think defeats the purpose of the gfci spa panel.

Any help is appreciated.

Joe

Why do you think you need to tie neutral to ground in your panel? This is guaranteed to trip the GFCI, as some of the return current thru the neutral will flow to ground.

Brew on

 

[dyqik]

Most likely the coil in your relay or the switch controlling it is shorted out, or the relay is miswired.

Does the relay or switch driving it have a ground connection? And is this in the right place, and does it have high resistance to the other contacts.

What is the resistance to ground and each other of the relay coil's neutral and hot terminals when disconnected?

 

[April15Hater]

Most likely the coil in your relay or the switch controlling it is shorted out, or the relay is miswired.

Does the relay or switch driving it have a ground connection? And is this in the right place, and does it have high resistance to the other contacts.

What is the resistance to ground and each other of the relay coil's neutral and hot terminals when disconnected?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001KGSJ74/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

That's the relay I'm using. No ground on relay, maybe thats the problem? There is high resistance between ground and hot poles when connected.

Not sure what you mean to disconnect on last question. I disconnected coil leads and measured bw ground and both coil terminals and no resistance.

 

[April15Hater]

Why do you think you need to tie neutral to ground in your panel? This is guaranteed to trip the GFCI, as some of the return current thru the neutral will flow to ground.

Brew on

Guess I'm questioning my understanding of how gfci works. But I'm pretty sure I've got it right. Here's something I thought of, in the spa panel, ground and neutral are tied back at the main panel. Should this be separated? I don't recall seeing separate ground and neutral busses in the main.

 

[doug293cz]

Guess I'm questioning my understanding of how gfci works. But I'm pretty sure I've got it right. Here's something I thought of, in the spa panel, ground and neutral are tied back at the main panel. Should this be separated? I don't recall seeing separate ground and neutral busses in the main.

How many wires are running into the spa panel? If you have 4 wires (hot-hot-neutral-ground) into the spa panel, then neural & ground are tied together in the main panel, and should not be tied together in the spa panel (or anywhere else but the main panel.)

Brew on

 

[April15Hater]

That's how I have it. I figured out the problem though, I wired the neutral out into the bus (which was effectively tying it to ground albeit unintentional). All is working now, so I guess brew day will just have to be brew night .

Thanks for the help!