Thanks!`

[LEVE]

The pellet stove I have installed has been working fine for over a week.. then three days ago it started to blow the Panel breaker when plugged in. For a couple of days I've been beating my head against the problem. The fuse in the stove never blows, so the problem had to be on the non-fused section of the line. Ohming it out showed no problem. I took the stove apart and checked every dang part and it all checked out fine. But it would still blow the breaker. Frustrated I called my go-to parts guy at the pellet stove store and jawed with him for a while. He only had the same suggestions that I'd already done.

Then I remember back to a post I'd read on the GJ forum about a compressor that was blowing the breaker... and it piqued my curiosity. The circuit that the compressor was plugged into was a protected GFI circuit.

My pellet stove was plugged into a circuit that had a 20amp GFI breaker in the panel. Humm... What would happen if I plugged the stove into a non-GFI circuit?

I just happened to have one... the Garage Door Opener circuits. A few minutes later there was an extension cord plugged into the GDO circuit and the stove was plugged into it. The breaker held with no problem. It's nice to have a 50°F+ garage again when it's snowing to beat the band outside.

So I checked the stove for ground fault problems ( ), found none and I'm still happy and warm.

Can I find the OP to send out a thanks? Nope... so I'm sending out a general Thank You for a little tid-bit of knowledge that ended my unsuccessful search for a problem that didn't exist.

 

[MikeLawrence]

So, I'm no electrician (by any means) but I am (technically) an EE...

Something in the back of my head is saying that you might want to check the GFI circuit using something else. If it trips on it too then it's probably just the GFI and you can flip the breaker and ignore it... but if it doesn't I'm pretty sure it's symptomatic of something like an intermittent fault which could potentially be a fire hazard.

Kudos on the quick thinking though =)

Michael Lawrence, Lissco.

 

[LEVE]

Thanks Mike... I'm no EE either... but I did a little more snooping this morning. I wanted to change out the GFI breaker with a standard 20amp breaker. As I removed the white pigtail wire that goes over to the Neutral bar I noticed that the screw was loose. It was not so loose that the wire was moving around, but the screw was definably not torqued down correctly.

I suspect that was the problem. Anyway, I did swap the breakers and will swap them back later when I've got more time to better troubleshoot. Since the box wasn't hot, I took the time to re-tighten every screw on the breakers and neutral bar.

 

[MikeLawrence]

Thanks Mike... I'm no EE either... but I did a little more snooping this morning. I wanted to change out the GFI breaker with a standard 20amp breaker. As I removed the white pigtail wire that goes over to the Neutral bar I noticed that the screw was loose. It was not so loose that the wire was moving around, but the screw was definably not torqued down correctly.

I suspect that was the problem. Anyway, I did swap the breakers and will swap them back later when I've got more time to better troubleshoot. Since the box wasn't hot, I took the time to re-tighten every screw on the breakers and neutral bar.

That sounds right on the money.