Just trying to confirm that my logic is correct in this application. My friend is in the process of selling his house. Old cloth wire no ground wire in some of the house. Meantime, buyer's inspector found some receptacles not grounded so I suggested is cheaper to go with a gfci breaker to protect them all since they are on one circuit. An individual gfci receptcle not good because the existing boxes too shallow and would require a wire mold box or cutting out old and putting in new etc. we decided on a breaker for ease.
So we buy a single 20amp gfci breaker and I pull the panel cover off to install it. Of course I have to trace back the hot to find the neutral. Upon finding where the romex comes into the panel I noticed it is a 12/3. Oups!! Who ever hooked up this multiwire did not use a two pole breaker so when i originally looked at the breaker with the cover on there was no way for me to know this. I told him it won't work. He insisted i try it anyway. Knowing, no harm and it would just trip it did. So I told him why it would not work. Well he had a few thoughts thinking maybe i was not sure but i knew. I told him we have to get a 2 pole 20amp gfci breaker in order to accomplish what we wanted to do. More than likely the home depot would not have this in the store and would have to be ordered from their site. (using home depot because he wants to use his credit card from them). So he wanted to go to the store anyway to see if they have one. He decided he was going to run this past the guy in the electrical isle. Well that was a mistake. The guy was insisting that if we used a two pole breaker we would be sending 240v to the receptacles. I kept explaining to the guy that it is a multiwire circuit but it seemed to go over his head.
The other thing is too that even though there was no tie between the two breakers for the multiwire circuit one breaker was a 15amp and the other a 20amp. So my friend now is kind of in question as to why I would know more about this than the guy in the electrical isle (who is probably from the paint isle covering for the electrical guy that is on lunch).
Granted the 20amp 2 pole GFCI is $98 it is still better than trying to use a gfci receptacle because of the appearance of a wire mold box and all the other stuff that needs to be done with the expensive molding, painting etc in order to protect the circuit from this first receptacle on the run.
Is my thinking correct here? You need the two pole because using a single pole it senses an imbalance on the neutral immeiaately because it is only monitoring one hot going out.
So we buy a single 20amp gfci breaker and I pull the panel cover off to install it. Of course I have to trace back the hot to find the neutral. Upon finding where the romex comes into the panel I noticed it is a 12/3. Oups!! Who ever hooked up this multiwire did not use a two pole breaker so when i originally looked at the breaker with the cover on there was no way for me to know this. I told him it won't work. He insisted i try it anyway. Knowing, no harm and it would just trip it did. So I told him why it would not work. Well he had a few thoughts thinking maybe i was not sure but i knew. I told him we have to get a 2 pole 20amp gfci breaker in order to accomplish what we wanted to do. More than likely the home depot would not have this in the store and would have to be ordered from their site. (using home depot because he wants to use his credit card from them). So he wanted to go to the store anyway to see if they have one. He decided he was going to run this past the guy in the electrical isle. Well that was a mistake. The guy was insisting that if we used a two pole breaker we would be sending 240v to the receptacles. I kept explaining to the guy that it is a multiwire circuit but it seemed to go over his head.
The other thing is too that even though there was no tie between the two breakers for the multiwire circuit one breaker was a 15amp and the other a 20amp. So my friend now is kind of in question as to why I would know more about this than the guy in the electrical isle (who is probably from the paint isle covering for the electrical guy that is on lunch).
Granted the 20amp 2 pole GFCI is $98 it is still better than trying to use a gfci receptacle because of the appearance of a wire mold box and all the other stuff that needs to be done with the expensive molding, painting etc in order to protect the circuit from this first receptacle on the run.
Is my thinking correct here? You need the two pole because using a single pole it senses an imbalance on the neutral immeiaately because it is only monitoring one hot going out.
Protecting multiwire circuit with a GFCI breaker
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