[ChrisTransAm78]

I'm trying to install a hot tub. Had to add new box to run power from as no slots were available. Tub needs 220. Installed said box, ran 4 wires (W/R/B/G #9) to back of house to 2nd box. Ran underground to Tub. All of this is enclosed in conduit, proper housings etc. No wires are exposed.

A guy came to help me light the wires up in said boxes.

From 2ndary box to main, he did not use the green wire (short run). This box has a 60amp GFCI breaker. All other wires are connected and run to back box. Green is run there as well but just not hooked up on either side.

On back box, 50amp non-GFCI breaker. Green is not connected to the box from main or to the breaker in any way (its loose). Green from tub is connected to a wire he ran to a grounding rod in the earth.

An additional 110 breaker is there on back box to power cute lights and all around the tub. All those are connected and run to a GFCI plug next to tub.

He could not get the green hooked up as he told me the blower motor on the tub was drawing but it worked fine the day before on my neighbors house (which is whom we bought it from and walked it litterly over to my house).

For now I cannot turn on the 110 breaker as it pops the main 60 amp GFCI. And to follow, I've had to now unplug the blower motor to keep it from popping it as well. (It worked for awhile that way but does not now - it actually blows for a second, then pops breaker)

I need to make this all work right. Can someone draw me something up or fix my drawing to make it all work?

Thanks a ton,
Chris

[Mr Twister]

I think you should bite the bullet and call a pro. Your family's safety is on the line here.

[A.W.Dille]

Mr Twister is right. No where in any of the boxes has a ground (the green wire) hooked up. I'm not real familiar with residential but this sounds like a single phase 220, The white wire should be a neutral. I hope your friend didn't hook this into the grounding bar anywhere. But from the sound of it the unit or none of the GFCI's are grounded. Call someone who is licensed to come rewire your unit before you end up with a major short that not only would burn up the unit on the hottub but may also cause a backfeed that could burn down your house.

[jeffgoss]

I had the same problem.

Turns out the GFI was wired incorrectly. The Neutral wire was hooked up in the wrong position on the GFI. There is a "hidden" connection to the upper left side of the GFI-on the back.

If you are not familiar with electrical, PLEASE call an expert. If you are, the GFI may be a first place to check. On mine, it is a "hot tub" specific GFI that has to be wired properly.

Good luck!

[SuperQuad]

What you describe as the new secondary main is actually a subpanel unless I am reading them wrong for some bizarre reason. Based on your drawings it is wired incorrectly with a 3 wire conductor. A subpanel needs to be wired with a 4 wire conductor from the main panel. The grounded conductors (Neutrals) must be "free-floating" and not bonded to the box. The equipment grounding conductors (bare copper grounds) must be bonded to the box. That is were the problem appears to start. Call a professional.

[ChrisTransAm78]

Yeah that's what I meant but I wanted it to be clear that is where I was drawing the power from. What do you mean by free floating?

Thanks,
Chris

[Cammer-6]

Wirings no hobby
call a professional electrician
no where should you leave the grounds disconnected.
Only at the point of service should the 2 (neutral and bond) be tied together.
All points thereafter should be separated but fully functional.

[chuckies76ta]

Use the ground from main panel to ground secondary panel and ground Hot tub.

How is the secondary panel wired? How is the GFI wired in this panel?

Charles

[ChrisTransAm78]

Guys - for real. People build nitro methane cars on here as a hobby. This whole board is made of hobbyist. They blow things up. Now that is dangerous. Appreciate the lecture but what I wanted was someone to help me like people help each other here about blowing crap up so that I don't blow crap up. Got it ? I can only think you guys are part of the Elect Union and won't tell me how to do it for them union rules. Thank god we don't treat our fellow engine friends like this. We'd get nowhere w/o info sharing.

If you know how to help me, I would appreciate it. chuckies - I'll PM you.

Thanks again!
Chris

[RAIV-Z]

Accurate example here with pictures.
http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/e...1/overview.htm

Specifically note the ground\neutral wiring between the main and your sub-panel.

[ChrisTransAm78]

Thanks RAIV - I found this site as well for those interested: http://forum.doityourself.com/electr...-tub-help.html

[Deadhead]

Originally Posted by ChrisTransAm78

Guys - for real. People build nitro methane cars on here as a hobby. This whole board is made of hobbyist. They blow things up. Now that is dangerous. Appreciate the lecture but what I wanted was someone to help me like people help each other here about blowing crap up so that I don't blow crap up. Got it ? I can only think you guys are part of the Elect Union and won't tell me how to do it for them union rules. Thank god we don't treat our fellow engine friends like this. We'd get nowhere w/o info sharing.

If you know how to help me, I would appreciate it. chuckies - I'll PM you.

Thanks again!
Chris

A convoluted GFI situation is just as complicated as a nitro-methane engine.

I am no union member, but I can tell you that there are many "professional" electricians who have problems troubleshooting what you describe. Especially after a homeowner has installed the initial phase. It takes only the smallest nick in the neutral wire somewhere to trip the GFI. In additon, once the GFI experiences a hard trip it may also be rendered useless.

First take the 220 GFI into your main panel and properly connect it to a known working circuit so you know that is not your problem. Then you should run continuity on your neutrals to ground to determine if you have leakage somewhere and that is not your problem.

Sorry you are frustrated, but this is one of the most complicated situations (not to mention the most dangerous for the end user) for an electrician to diagnose and without having your hands and tools there it is near impossible to take all of the circumstances into account to give you a decent diagnosis.

[ChrisTransAm78]

For those interested in learning a few things here's a few answers to my delima...kinda interesting TBH. http://forum.doityourself.com/electr...-tub-help.html

[TA455HO]

It reminds me of a story from late last year in this area. Couple electrocuted in their hot tub. I hope you get it wired correctly.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...hottub21m.html

[Coach]

Chris,

I was a union electrician many years ago and up until the crash I owned a custom home building company. The reason so many folks here and on the other forum are being so insistant that you have this corrected by a pro is not a matter of money. Anyone who has done this for a while has stories about people being fried by improper wiring, I lost a cousin to an old tube and knob three way which always leaves a hot leg to the light fixture ( known as a California Three Way ).

The concern is that with the number of issues you have even if you get the GFI not to trip when you run the motor, you probably will not actually have a protected circuit.

Now I am not saying you have to shell out big bucks to get it fixed by a union electrician, but you should have a licensed electrician do the work. Hey if you were closer I would send a couple of my guys out to do it for beer and Pontiac parts.

Best regards and best of luck,
Harry

[chuckies76ta]

Chris: It looks to me like the neutral in the GFI panel is not hooked up correct. The load neutral comes off the GFI breaker.

Also, Here is Canada, the grounds go on the panel or equipnment, not neutral bar. They only get tied together at the main service or main panel..

Also looks like you have Aluminum and copper together in main panel.... different metals react..

I don't like the way the grounding is done.. Grounding is for equipnment only. protection..

I'm an Electrician and like everyone say's you should have someone look at this..

Charles

[Mike S]

The only reason we are telling to call a pro is for your saftey and your families safty. Electricity wil KILL you and is not to be taken lightly. There is no secret. But we can tell when someone is over there head. I have been an electricion for over 30 years. The worst thing we have to do is go and straight home owners mistakes (or there friends). I have seen on instance where a home owner wired his basment in no. 12 thhn (single conductor wire). I am sure you will get it to work and if your happy with it thats fine. How bad will you feel if someone gets hurt? I am not comeing down on you, Just would like to see you do it safe and right. It is hard to expain how to fix you problems when you don't understand the terminology. Sometimes we have to spend money on pros, sometime we should.


Yes you can expain how to build a nitro engine over the internet. Imagine how hard it would be to expain if that person didn't know what rods, pistons, bearings, ect. Let alone the theroy of it's operation.

[John V.]

I'm just a D-I-Y'er hoping to learn something. Electricity has always confounded me. And I agree with the advice here that it can be very dangerous.

But journeyman electricians weren't born with their knowledge, they acquired it. I figure I can learn how to wire stuff if I take precautions and go slow to be sure I understand what is needed and then do it correctly. For example, I have watched electricians routinely wire stuff "hot". I always cut off the main, I'm just not that courageous and since I don't know what I'm doing, I won't fool with live power.

One big advantage to using a pro is that I can expect him to come in and get it done quickly and expect that it is done right.

But I've watched just enough "Holmes on Homes" to know that not all "pros" are created equally. In my own life, I can tell you I have been disappointed in the work of experienced "pros" (not necessarily electricians) when I have called for help. I may be slow but I am meticulous. I hate seeing evidence of sloppy work but I also know that time is money and these guys often do things for speed, not necessarily for quality.

I was going to comment on a couple things that seemed curious to me, but then found this link, thought it might be more helpful than anything I could think to tell you.

http://www.spadepot.com/spacyclopedi...ot-tub-spa.htm

[John V.]

Chris, I posted before reading thru that other site where you posted with pix.

I thought OMG! when I saw your pix.

Your Main Panel is where it starts to go all wrong. I'm a rank amateur and the first thing I noticed is it looks like the 2 legs come into that panel and there is no main breaker. I suspect that may have been okay back in the day, but just looks bad wrong to me, not what I'm used to seeing for a Main Panel.

I assume you must have a Service Disconnect that shuts power off to the Main Panel, else you could not service it except while hot!

I assume you pulled the disconnect to add the subfeed wires? Then it looks like you did the same thing I once did to run feed to the Subpanel, just connected wire to the main lugs and over to the Subpanel?

I learned how wrong that was when I sold that house. Failed inspection. Had to get an electrician to come in and install a proper Subpanel and rewire circuits accordingly.

IIRC, the correct way is to pull the two legs from a 2 pole breaker in the Main Panel. I had no spare positions for a 2 pole breaker. I think a circuit or two had to be removed from the Main Panel to make way for the double pole breaker that fed the Subpanel. The removed circuits then had to be fed from new breakers in the Subpanel along with feeding the 220V circuit that I had added.

By the looks of things, seems to me you may have some spare positions to install a 2 pole breaker in your Main? If so, you should run the subfeed to the Subpanel from such a breaker in the Main Panel.

Not sure, but think at least part of the functional aspect of doing this is that you can shut off power to the Subpanel at the breaker in the Main Panel. The way it is now, you'd have to pull the disconnect in order to cut power to the Subpanel. Can't say if the way you have it is less safe (except that I don't think it is considered safe to have two wires at the main lugs), but I suspect it is not to Code in any event.

As others have pointed out, the Green ground wire should be connected to the Ground bus bar in the Subpanel and in the Back Box. This bus bar should be separate from the White Wire Neutral bus bar.

From what I see, your Subpanel has the separate bus bars but your Back Box does not have separate bus bars for Neutral and Ground.

I think that is a problem.

I don't know if running the grounding rod is a problem, but I believe that is not the proper way to do it. And may be entirely wrong for your situation.

As far as I can tell, the Green Ground Wire from the Hot Tub should connect to a Ground bus bar in the Back Box independent from the Neutral Bus Bar. Then the Green wire in your 4 wire cable will connect to the independent Ground bus bar in the Subpanel and finally, from there, a Green Wire should connect to the Bus Bar in the Main Panel where it is joined finally on a common bus bar with White Wire Neutral.

I'm really confused that you have a Red & Green Wire joined in the Back Box. That seems very wrong, I take it the Red Wire is connected to the Grounding Rod planted in the ground? Is the spare circuit breaker connected to anything yet, I don't see wires?

And where is the bare copper ground wire coming from? It would be treated same as a Green Wire but I'm wondering why it looks like you have both a bare copper and a Green Wire coming from the Hot Tub? I'd like to know more about that.

Electrically, I don't know if it makes a difference, but I would have fed the Back Box thru a regular breaker and put a GFI in the Back Box close to the Hot Tub. By code, I think you also need a disconnect switch about 5 ft. from the Hot Tub (so you don't have to trip the breaker to shut power off to the Hot Tub). 5 ft. I assume so you can't touch it from within the Hot Tub?

For the spare circuit, I assume it should also be GFI protected, but I think you can do that by installing a receptacle with built in GFI rather than trying to run that circuit thru a common GFI breaker as you have it now.

One last thing, I'm not sure you have your GFI wired correctly. I see the pigtail connection and the Black & Red Hot connections. Should it also have an additional White Neutral connection from the Hot Tub (or Back Box) instead of connected to the Neutral bus bar as you have done?

[runninwild]

I don't know what type of breakers you have in your house main, but I made room by switching to the slimline type. Compresses two breakers into one slot. This is how I made room to run 220V service to my detached garage. Added a 100A to use as the main, then ran to the auxiliary box in the garage.
To properly wire a GFCI on a four wire 240V installation, when using a sub-panel box, all four wires should be brought out from the main box. The two hot legs should be attached to the GFCI breaker at the proper locations, then come out of the GFCI breaker and be run to the spa. The neutral leg from the main box should come out and be attached to the neutral bus located on the side of the breaker. The neutral pigtail on the breaker should then be attached to the other side of the neutral bus. There is a location for another neutral lead that goes out to the spa from the breaker, this neutral wire should be run out to the spa. The ground wire from the house and ground from the spa should be bonded together in the sub-box. If the neutral and ground are not kept separate in this fashion the spa will instantly trip the GFCI breaker. Good Luck.