# HOT TUB has me ready to scream



## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Ok, on my own today and I ran into something that has me so frustrated I'm probably overlooking something simple...

Here is the deal:

Customer had a friend "whom was suppose to know something about electricity" install this used hot tub.
He ran a #2 Alum 3wire SE from main to hot tub panel in garage
He set a new ground rod outside beside tub and tied it into the hot tub panel
Ran #6 4 wire to hot tub.
Landed his ground wire from 4 wire feeding hot tub and #6 solid to ground rod onto same bus bar
Neutral wire from tub is on neutral bus in panel along with the alum bare in the #2 SE Feed.
Hots of course land on 60amp GFCI
NOW....try to turn on GFCI and it trips. Found that when i take reading at hot tub i get 120V from ground to neutral THEN 240V from one phase to ground wire. Same 120 v from ground to neutral in hot tub panel.

I'm so frustrated i want to scream. What am i missing here?
I know this wasn't wired properly but why the voltage?
When i disconnect the ground on 4 wire feed to the hot tub the GFCI will set of course but no ground present.

Please Help!


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## Chris Kennedy (Nov 19, 2007)

working4aliving said:


> Found that when i take reading at hot tub i get 120V from ground to neutral THEN 240V from one phase to ground wire. Same 120 v from ground to neutral in hot tub panel.


Whats going on in the garage PNL?


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Chris Kennedy said:


> Whats going on in the garage PNL?



The hot tub panel is the panel in the garage.
It is fed from the main panel located in the basement.

Feed to hot tub panel is landed on a standard 60amp breaker there.


Is that answer your question?


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

Phase and neutral reversed on the sq d sub panel.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

sbrn33 said:


> Phase and neutral reversed on the sq d sub panel.



Would it be possible they switched somewhere in the hot tub?

Everything appears to match up correctly in the hot tub panel located in garage all the way from tub to main panel...............


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

Step back and look again. It could be in the hot tub but I doubt it.


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## Bootss (Dec 30, 2011)

draw everything out on paper from start to finish analyze your system. ( all your panels, Multi wire branch, etc.)


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## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

Is the garage attached to the house? 

Why the ground rod. If you are in an attached building then put the dp gfci in the basement panel if you only need 3 wires to the tub- if you need 4 wires then the feed to the panel needs to be changed


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## papaotis (Jun 8, 2013)

wires are crossed somewhere. you cant get 120v from ground to nuetral without a power source involved. right?


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## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

To be honest I am not sure what you have going on there. 

If the gfci won't turn on how are you measuring voltage? Is the hot tub the only thing in the panel? 

If there are other things in the panel and you are measuring the voltage to the panel at 240V to ground then you either have the ground energized or you have lost a neutral. 

Please explain more clearly what you have.


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## MikePEC (Jun 23, 2012)

Some need a white jumper wire removed to switch from 120v to 240v.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Dennis Alwon said:


> To be honest I am not sure what you have going on there.
> 
> If the gfci won't turn on how are you measuring voltage? Is the hot tub the only thing in the panel?
> 
> ...



I'll tell you what, let me draw it out and i'll post a pic but if this helps any........

When i disconnect the ground wire from the hot tub panel located in the garage the GFCI will set, that's when i take the voltage readings.

Only thing in this panel is the 60amp GFCI breaker for the hot tub.

My assumption is with the hot tub panel it's to have a disconnecting means within sight given the main panel is in the house basement.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Don't laugh at my drawing:no:


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

Dude, I am telling you that you switched your neutral and hot in the sub. The terminals can be hard to tell apart on some sub panels. Especially 3R ones with the cover right in your face.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

sbrn33 said:


> Dude, I am telling you that you switched your neutral and hot in the sub. The terminals can be hard to tell apart on some sub panels. Especially 3R ones with the cover right in your face.



After the day I've had anything is possible.
This all was wired prior to my arrival but I wouldn't doubt anything right now.
I'll be back out there tomorrow I'll recheck it all.

Thanks man


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## drspec (Sep 29, 2012)

If it's a Midwest spa panel with a GE gfci breaker I can almost guarantee the neutral and a hot is switched as sbrn33 said.

I have an employee that does it almost EVERY time.


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## Cow (Jan 16, 2008)

WTF are the ground rods for, if they aren't tied to anything!:blink:


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## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

I will say it again you cannot feed a 4 wire hot tub from a 3 wire sub panel.


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## crazyboy (Nov 8, 2008)

Why is the neutral wire from the tub landed on the bus and not the gfi?


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

Dennis Alwon said:


> I will say it again you cannot feed a 4 wire hot tub from a 3 wire sub panel.


You could but it would not be safe or to code.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Cow said:


> WTF are the ground rods for, if they aren't tied to anything!:blink:


Great question.......


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

DA, looking at that diagram you are right on. He needs a new feeder from the main panel. That ground is doing absolutely nothing.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Dennis Alwon said:


> I will say it again you cannot feed a 4 wire hot tub from a 3 wire sub panel.


I don't disagree but frankly I have to have an answer to what's going on with this first. 
I've already told them that their "friend" apparently doesn't know anything about electricity outside of being dangerous with it.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

crazyboy said:


> Why is the neutral wire from the tub landed on the bus and not the gfi?


My error, runs to breaker as it's suppose to but i'm not redrawing:laughing:


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## xlink (Mar 12, 2012)

It's way too late for me to read through all the contradictory information, but could the hot tub have a ground fault?


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## circuitman1 (Mar 14, 2013)

what happened to the white wire from the main panel ? or am i missing something.never seen a two wire cable with red , black & bare.


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## crazyboy (Nov 8, 2008)

xlink said:


> It's way too late for me to read through all the contradictory information, but could the hot tub have a ground fault?


OK, because in your text description you also said it was terminated on the bar.


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## frenchelectrican (Mar 15, 2007)

As soon I look at your drawing there are few red flags just flew at my face.,, :no:

What the heck ya running the bare ground conductor from subpanel to the spa ??

Really IMO I think you should tell your customer freind that he have no bussiness to mess around with the connection of spa if he did not read the Art 680 related to the spa useage.

That will really cover it pretty well on them.

I have a feeling that this is a unpermited job which it can cause major issue down the road.

Is that garage is attached or detached ? that will make the differnce on one part.,

The other part as few members posted it should be 4 wire feeder not the plain jane SE cable which that is genrally a no-no unless you get SER but only on interal side but once you get outside to the spa the SER do not meet the NEC code requirement which the issue is the bare ground conductor that will stop ya on track.

If it was in my postion I will just rip that out and do it right from start.

Merci,
Marc


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## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

circuitman1 said:


> what happened to the white wire from the main panel ? or am i missing something.never seen a two wire cable with red , black & bare.



He said it was se cable. SEU has Black, black with red strip and bare ground. I stated twice that the feeder is wrong, there is no need for ground rod-- the whole install is wrong. Who knows if the tub is messed up also.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Dennis Alwon said:


> He said it was se cable. SEU has Black, black with red strip and bare ground. I stated twice that the feeder is wrong, there is no need for ground rod-- the whole install is wrong. Who knows if the tub is messed up also.


Yes, everything about the install is wrong.
I'm going to tear it all out and fix what they did, which they will love that but should've done it right the first time.

Regardless the more I've thought about this now that my mind is clear I truly believe there is an issue within the tub. Reason for this is that when I remove wires from the terminal block on the tub and take readings I get the following...

Phase to Neutral - 120V
Phase to Ground - 120V
Phase to Phase - 240V

It's not until I hook up the tub I get the gfi tripping

I'm leaving it at this, I'll get the feed to the hot tub panel & hot tub panel to hot tub fixed and if there is still an issue they can call the spa people.


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## 8V71 (Dec 23, 2011)

I'm confused about the voltage readings in your first post. Hot tub connected but breaker open? There is no way to read 240 volts under this condition. Are you 100% sure the tub neutral is landed on the breaker? Your OP text and drawing say otherwise.


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## 8V71 (Dec 23, 2011)

I wouldn't even waste anymore time troubleshooting this problem. Like others have mentioned you need to start over from scratch. You have no equipment ground to the tub.

Edit: The voltage readings in your last post are indicating that the ground is bonded to the neutral in the HT panel. Even if the neutral is landed correctly on the breaker I don't think it will ever work this way. Someone can correct me but I think some of your neutral current will be trying to return on the earth ground and the breaker will always open because of this. The earth ground (rods) is doing nothing for safety.


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## sbrn33 (Mar 15, 2007)

Please take a picture of that sub panel.


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## Cow (Jan 16, 2008)

8V71 said:


> I wouldn't even waste anymore time troubleshooting this problem. Like others have mentioned you need to start over from scratch.


I agree, there's no point in troubleshooting something that needs to be replaced anyhow.


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## HotTubTips (Jul 9, 2013)

*Most common mistake*

Unless I already missed this in the thread:

"Neutral wire from tub is on neutral bus in panel"

The Neutral from the tub must go to the Load Neutral lug on the GFCI breaker. The permanent (pigtail) Neutral from the breaker goes to the bus bar. If both Neutrals are on the bus bar, the breaker will trip every time.

I'm not an electrician but I have this conversation with licensed electricians about twice a month. 99.99% of the time you're going to land that Neutral on the bus...unless it's a 220V GFCI breaker...which are pretty much only used in hot tubs.

I did have one tub stump both me and an electrician for about a day. It turns out the insulators in the old, Connecticut Electric 'spa disconnect' had cracked and some current was leaking to ground through the grounded box.


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## Bootss (Dec 30, 2011)

next question is how much you going to charge for an upgrade we can Hagel over that :laughing:now.


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## dogleg (Dec 22, 2008)

Maybe a loose neutral somewhere.It would give you a reading of 240 to ground on one phase?


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## gold (Feb 15, 2008)

Pic of the hot tub panel.

I think your reading an open neutral because you don't have a neutral. 

I suspect the ground from the SEU is tied to the ground in the sub which isn't bonded to the neutral bar. 

That would account for reading 240v on one leg.

If thats the case then the controller on the hot tub is probably smoked.

But i'm not sure if the gfi would even set if thats the case.


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## working4aliving (Nov 12, 2012)

Ok, I started with a fresh mind this morning and after really thinking hard on this I thought to myself even given the feed to the hot tub panel is wrong there is still something not right...I don't like unanswered questions so prior to tearing everything out and doing it the way the original guy should've I decided to do some good old fashion troubleshooting on the hot tub side.....

It's a hot tub so I know it has a heating element so I thought if that element is grounding out this would explain the breaker tripping along with the voltage on the ground (when ground feeding to hot tub was removed thus why breaker would set)

So first thing when I got there today I isolated the heating element.

BAM, everything came on and worked as suppose to. With the exception of the heater of course.

Turned it back off explained that not only do they need to have the electrical feed fixed they also need a spa repair man to come and fix that as well.

This should've been my first thought yesterday but I let frustration get me stirred up. With the screwed up original install by their "friend" I found myself getting hung up on that.

Sometimes a clear mind can be so handy.

I appreciate the input guys.:thumbup:


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## lighterup (Jun 14, 2013)

*Can I get a Hot Tub!?*

My humble opinion is that the sub panel is out of code because..

a) It is not a service entrance feeder , therefore the sub feeder must be
a 4 wire feeder with the grounding conductor seperated / isolated
from the grounded conductor (neutral) ...
b) The neutral cannot be bare in this situation , it must be sheathed

It seems to me that the gfci breaker is reading the bonding of the neutral
to the grounding conductor. This will trip a gfci every time.

As far as the 120 volt from ground to neutral .... if there are other loads
in the garage sub panel , turn them off and re-check hot tub .


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## hooch (Sep 18, 2010)

is your sub panel bonded? if it is stop looking and isolate your neutral


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## Victory Pete (Jun 29, 2012)

Look carefully at the connections on the GFI, make sure the neutral is going to the correct lug, they don't always go directly over the breakers white pigtail like on SP GFI breakers.


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## mikewillnot (Apr 2, 2013)

Back in the day when I was working maintaining a building full of 1950s vintage tube-type radar equipment by day, and working on cars at night, I developed a personal troubleshooting rule (#4, I think it is). 

4. When you're troubleshooting, and you find an obvious problem, STOP TROUBLESHOOTING AND FIX THE PROBLEM. Then, resume troubelshooting. 

I developed this rule after deciding, on a number of occasions, "That can't possibly be related; I'll fix it later. it must be something else." ... Only to find, later, after much wasted troubleshooting, that once I fixed the thing I saw originally, the problem went away. What I thought were unrelated things turned out to be related. 

BTW: the prior rules take priority:
1. Check the bulb.
2. Check the bulb.
3. Check the bulb.
(substitute fuse/circuit breaker for bulb and repeat) 

#1 I got beat into my brain in the radar tower, which probably had 1,500 indicator lights on the front of the equipment cabinets. literally. ALWAYS check the bulb first, before you start troubleshooting. With a known good bulb. The odds on any given day that one or more indicator bulbs had burned out were very high. 

#1-3 I developed when troubleshooting a mercury vapor light in a distributor warehouse, and found 3 bulbs in a row, including 2 new ones right off the distributor's shelf, that turned out to be bad. Many hours of wasted time troubleshooting a light fixture that worked fine. 

People now think I have some kind of a mystical gift for troubleshooting.


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## Shockdoc (Mar 4, 2010)

You answer your own question. Neutral from tub is on with bare from cable in sub box. Neutral from tub must feed through gfci breaker.

Sent from my C5215 using electriciantalk.com mobile app


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## Ibewye (Apr 24, 2012)

*I THINK I CAN HELP!! It's the 60 amp gfci breaker*

Hey buddy, was just wondering if you've solved your problem. I ran into exact same scenario a few years back. The problem ended up being that the 60 amp gfci is not capable of splitting the 2 phases into separate unbalanced loads the way the hot tub attempts too. Tub uses both phases for the heaters and pumps which produce a balanced load on both phases but then they use one phase to run accessories like lights, led touchscreen and audio system which now creates an unbalanced load between phases. It wasn't until I had unhooked the 120 volt accessory circuit that the gfci held and heaters and pump ran fine, but when I reconnected the 120 circuit and turned on accessories that the breaker would trip. Decided to try a 50 amp gfci (it's all I had used on other tubs with no problems) and it held fine with everything on and running, so I looked at the 60 amp spec sheet and found some fine print that mentioned the load sharing issue. I may be completely wrong but when I saw a hot tub problem and a 60 amp breaker I figure it was with signing up to make the suggestion. Good luck.


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## guy2073 (May 4, 2011)

Any time i service a hot tub issue i start by removing the ozone wire harness. If that wont work remove heater harness, then 90% of the time i ask for my check and tell them to call a spa guy. Very few times has it been something else


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