1 - Converting to GFCI Circuit Breakers
- 2-pole GFCI breaker or
1-pole GFCI breaker - 3-wire system or 4-wire system
GFCI breakers are designed for people's safety, to prevent electrical shocks
when people may indirectly come in contact with electrical equipment
that is not properly grounded, wet or defective. It does so
by interrupting the current to the circuit (tripping) as
soon as it detects a possibly dangerous condition.
For pools and spa applications,
the GFCI circuit breaker must be a "personnel" Ground Fault
Interrupter (5mA, Class A), not an "equipment" Ground
Fault Interrupter. This will trip with a lower
"fault" current of 5mA instead of 30mA or 100mA.
Installing a new GFCI circuit breaker
is quite intuitive, as the wires coming from the "load" (for
example from a River pool or SPA 120/240 Vac load
application), need to be connected directly to the
circuit breaker "load" terminals.
Please read
carefully the GFCI breaker manufacturer's instructions to
identify which of these load terminals (screws) is for the
white neutral wire. The following diagrams show the white
wire terminal positioned at the center, but some circuit
breakers may be different. In some cases this terminal is
marked by a white dot, or by "load neutral".
If there is no white wire coming from the
load, then you are dealing with a 3-wire system, possibly
for a 240 Vac load application (See Diagram
2).
The white "pigtail" wire from the circuit
breaker must always be connected to the neutral bar in the breaker panel, where
the white wires from other circuit breakers are connected:
New GFCI 2-POLE breaker installation diagrams:
DIAGRAM 1:
4-wire
system GFCI connection
DIAGRAM 2:
3-wire system GFCI connection
The diagrams for the 1-pole GFCI circuit breakers
would be the same as diagrams 1 and 2, but without
the red wire.
A possible confusion arises when
you are going to replace an existing breaker with a four
wire system connection. This is because with the existing breaker
the white and green wires go directly to their bars, inside
the circuit breaker box:
DIAGRAM 3: Regular circuit breaker 4-wire system connection
Thus, when replacing a regular circuit
breaker with a GFCI circuit breaker in a 4-wire system
connection, you need to convert from
DIAGRAM 3 to
DIAGRAM 1. This
involves disconnecting the white wire coming from the Pool
or SPA (connected to the Line Neutral Bar) and connecting it
directly to the new GFCI circuit breaker.
What difference does it make?
If you do not
move the white wire, the GFCI circuit breaker will likely
trip immediately, as the GFCI breaker may see a small
difference in conductivity or resistance between its empty screw (where the
white wire should be) and the Line Neutral Bar (where the
"pigtail" wire is eventually connected).
However, if you have a
3-wire system connection, then there is no white wire to
disconnect or move! This may be a further cause of
confusion.
Of course, in both cases, you need to
make sure that the "pigtail" wire from the GFCI breaker is
connected to the Line Neutral Bar.
No more confusion, right?
The following are some GFCI circuit breaker sample
images
from three major brands.
Because of the many
brands, types and models for each manufacturer, your
new circuit breaker may not look exactly as
illustrated.
SIEMENS:
1-pole GFCI breaker:
2-pole GFCI breaker:
GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE):
1-pole GFCI breaker:
2-pole GFCI breaker:
SQUARE D:
1-pole GFCI breaker:
2-pole GFCI breaker:
2 - Universal changeover
switch
- Rotary "combo" switch -
"Combined" switch - Rotary control combination
switch
A 12- contact Universal Changeover Switch is useful
when you want to power two separate 3-phase motors
from a single, limited source of 3-phase power.
One of the ways to transform
single phase to three-phase is by using an
electronic "inverter", such as the one provided with
the RIVER pool, which
allows you to run electric motors up to 10HP.
By using a changeover switch, you can direct your
three-phase power to more than one motor. The
simplest changeover switch can switch between two
motors, with an intermediate OFF position:
Wiring diagram
WARNING: Make sure you use a switch rated for a
higher voltage
than the voltage in use and rated
for a higher current than the total
load of the
equipment attached to each output wire.
This diagram is for a 3-pole switch.
A 2-pole
switch has only 8 contacts: 1 to 8.
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Physical
switch connections:
(for each of the 3 poles)
S = screw number
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Electrical connection diagram
for each of the 3 poles:
must have an external
jumper
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