Posted by CB in central NY on May 18, 2010 at 08:31:43 from (204.248.24.162):
I know that GFCI issues have been covered here before, but here is mine.
I have a drive-in hay barn / machinery shed, which has two 30-amp Square D Homeline breakers powering two zones (one zone is the hay barn, the other is a cattle run-in shed on the back). The output includes several lights and four 110-volt outlets. I normally run a small vacuum pump and maybe a hay elevator.
Both locations are quite dry. There is no wiring anywhere close to the ground and all the fixtures are high up, even the outlets.
I recently installed a plug-in electric fencer (used to have a solar one). I am also planning to put in a stock tank with a heater for the winter. So I figured, I'd replace the regular breakers with GFCI.
The first thing I learned was that Square D did not make a 30-amp single-pole GFCI breaker and I thought the 20-amp ones were not sufficient. So I bought a 30-amp double-pole GFCI breaker and put it in. The problem is, it trips immediately. I read that tripping could be caused by wire runs over 250 feet, and I am at about 170 max. The other strange thing is that if I separately wire the two "zones" of the barn, only one will trip. And lastly, when I flip a lightswitch, it causes a trip.
So far, I have had no luck tracing the fault, if any. I am thinking that the breaker itself might be at fault. The sub-panel is grounded right at the barn and the neutral and ground are separate.
Thanks for any help /advice. I've done quite a bit of wiring over the years and never had this issue before. The regular breakers have never tripped.
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