What happens when you use your pump to shoot water at your control panel

[P-J]

passedpawn - You mention the spa panel should be as close to the outlet as possible. Did you mean to the dryer outlet, or to the brewing control panel? I am considering a setup using a spa panel in my garage where I have a dedicated 100 amp service, and running my 125 foot extension cord I use for my welder from there to my brew house on brewing days(brew house wiring is not rated for the amps required for electric brewing). Extension cord is triple - 4Ga conductors. Will this cause me a probelm and will the gfci still work as intended?

Thanks,

Underlined - Is that a 3 wire extension cord? If so, you really need to mount your Spa Panel in your brew house so that you can develop the neutral/ground needed for your brewery. If you need to know how to do this, let me know.

Just don't mount the GFCI Spa Panel in or on your brew rig.

P-J

 

[passedpawn]

passedpawn - You mention the spa panel should be as close to the outlet as possible. Did you mean to the dryer outlet, or to the brewing control panel? I am considering a setup using a spa panel in my garage where I have a dedicated 100 amp service, and running my 125 foot extension cord I use for my welder from there to my brew house on brewing days(brew house wiring is not rated for the amps required for electric brewing). Extension cord is triple - 4Ga conductors. Will this cause me a probelm and will the gfci still work as intended?

Thanks,

I meant the GFCI should be as far outside the brewing area as possible. Ideally, it is in your breaker box, but if not then get it outside the "wet zone". From the post above, you can see the wet zone is probably bigger then we imagined!

So, you would want the spa panel in your garage at the far end of the extension cord. The 2 hots and the neutral can run through the extension, but your ground can be staked right there in your brew house. Any exposed metal should be tied together and then bonded well to that earth ground. I think that would be OK, but now that I re-read that I don't know. [edit] actually this probably wouldn't be a good idea. You need to feed the ground from the service box to the building. The GFCI might be OK with a different earth ground, but likely a breaker won't trip on a fault. And probably it's against code anyway, so nevermind.

 

[zazbnf]

Underlined - Is that a 3 wire extension cord? If so, you really need to mount your Spa Panel in your brew house so that you can develop the neutral/ground needed for your brewery. If you need to know how to do this, let me know.

Just don't mount the GFCI Spa Panel in or on your brew rig.

P-J

Yes it is a 3 wire extension cord, so would I be better off putting the spa panel in the brew house, using the extension cord to run 2 hots and a neutral then sinking a new ground rod at the brew house for a ground? or is there a better way to get neutral and ground?

Thanks,

 

[P-J]

Yes it is a 3 wire extension cord, so would I be better off putting the spa panel in the brew house, using the extension cord to run 2 hots and a neutral then sinking a new ground rod at the brew house for a ground? or is there a better way to get neutral and ground?

Thanks,

I'd really like to talk this out with you so that I understand all of the detail that you are faced with.

If you don't mind, please send me a PM with contact info and I'll call you to talk it out.

P-J

 

[bf514921]

first, that is one helluva extention cord, second, don't know whay it would be a problem, is the cord plugged into somethig that is already a gfi?

 

[bf514921]

i was wondering about the spam, i was thinking poeple replied to my thread get all excited and bam, spam. is it some kind of bot or something?

 

[SwampassJ]

i was wondering about the spam, i was thinking poeple replied to my thread get all excited and bam, spam. is it some kind of bot or something?

Yeah there is a handful of bots/spammers that come in and run up their post counts to blend in and then wham spam the **** out of the place. Before they fixed the links they would post the 5 posts to hit the mininum to start a thread and then spam the general forum.

 

[bf514921]

to bad, people don't have something better to do than spam homebrewtalk, thanks moderators for keeping it cleaned up, brew on !

 

[kal]

I am kinda concerned that water was able to get into the panel at all. A brewery should be a "wash-down" environment.

Agreed. The panel should be built so that it can be used in a wet condition. This means using NEMA 4 or NEMA 12 or IP65 rated parts and enclosure.

NEMA ratings: National Electrical Manufacturers Association - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IP ratings: IP Code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Glad nobody was hurt.

Kal

 

[bf514921]

nope no one injured, figured if i posted my boneheaded move, others could learn, maybe go that extra step to make things even safer. of course we could just order one of kals killer panels and be done with it .

 

[lazybean]

Yes it is a 3 wire extension cord, so would I be better off putting the spa panel in the brew house, using the extension cord to run 2 hots and a neutral then sinking a new ground rod at the brew house for a ground? or is there a better way to get neutral and ground?

Thanks,

Sounds like your welding outlet is 220 only. the 3 wires being 2 hots and an Equipment ground. If your using 220 only for your heater elements then you wont need a neutral for them. **Wire the white pigtail from the GFCI breaker to the equipment ground, BUT DO NOT use the neutral lug on the GFCI breaker for anything** this will allow the 'test button' on the GFCI to still work properly, and protect your 220v circuit.

Your control Circuit is going to be were you need 120v. instead of trying to jerry rig a neutral and creating more problems, why not run a second extension cord you plug into a 120volt GFCI outlet, and use that for your control circuit and pumps.


As to the OP, and some one saying he should replace the house panel breaker with the GFCI, that would create a bigger problem in his case. The house breaker is 30 amps, which means the wiring is most likely 10awg, the GFCI breaker in a Spa panel is 50 amps. He would have to replace the wire with 8awg or buy a 30amp GFCI breaker.

While that would be ideal, simply locating the Spa panel right next to the dryer outlet, and running a longer cord to the brewery control panel would adequately protect the 'wet zone'.

I made an electrical safety thread a while ago, that might help some.