Use ground wire in romex as a neutral?

[bd8134]

I hope you can advise me on this.
Not garage related, but if I can resolve this I can get back out there..
I want to keep everything to electrical / MA state compliance.
I just put in a master bath. I have a towel warmer that I want connected to an electric under floor timer / controller.
The electrican ran a 4-wire romex from the outlet where the towel warmer is (approx 1.2A load), and also where the supply comes in, to the opposite wall where the floor warmer controller is (approx 3.4A load).
At the controller end, for the 4-wire romex, the white and black are used for supply and the red is connected to the load output on the controller.
Back at the towel warmer end, the red supplies 120v to the towel warmer and the white is taken from the common white in that box.
The problem is that the towel warmer controller has a GFCI built in which trips when the towel warmer is switched on. It is because only the one wire /load for the towel warmer comes from the controller (the red wire), the white is taken from the common in the towel warmer box. Hence the GFCI detects a different load across the 2 wires.
It is not possible to run another wire between the 2 boxes.
I do have a ground wire that is in the romex. At present it is just connected to the metal braid / shield on the supply wire to the electric elements under the floor. The timer does not have a ground connection.
Can I use the ground wire in romex as a neutral?
I have a GFCI in the panel.
My other option is to run another supply from an outlet box that is underneath the timer box but is on another circuit.

 

[Falcon67]

>Can I use the ground wire in romex as a neutral?

Not just no but hell no. You've got some other issue and doing that will not solve your problem. Some links to the controls, warmer specs and/or wiring diagrams might help to science things out.

 

[bd8134]

Great thanks.
I will run a new supply from an adjacent box and terminate the resulting unused wires.

 

[ishiboo]

>Can I use the ground wire in romex as a neutral?

Not just no but hell no. You've got some other issue and doing that will not solve your problem. Some links to the controls, warmer specs and/or wiring diagrams might help to science things out.

It would solve his problem but be unsafe, he needs an additional wire to have a dedicated neutral from the towel warmer GFCI to the towel warmer. Right now, current goes out on the red wire and is returned on a wire which doesn't return to the towel warmer GFCI, so as he said it sees the imbalance and trips.

But, as Falcon said, "hell no" to using the ground as a neutral. First, it's unsafe to have a neutral wire in the boxes which is uncovered, but also you'd then loose your grounding of the metal towel warmer which is also a safety issue.

Can you easily bypass the towel warmer controller's included GFCI? If so, I would install a GFCI breaker in the panel.

 

[bd8134]

I am using a Sunstat Pro. http://www.suntouch.com/sunstat/
I have called them and they say there is no way to disable the GFCI inside the unit.

 

[ddawg16]

bd.....your lucky....the guys were being gently on you....

Doing what you wanted to do is about akin to using white wire as the 120Vac hot in your house.....

But as Falcon said, it sounds like something else is wrong. If you have a red wire....and a white wire going to your towel warmer....then internally in the towel warmer....power comes in on the red...goes out on the white....regardless of where the white is tied to the a common....without a different path somewhere, the currents should match.....something else is wrong.

Have you tried using an extension cord and widow maker to power the towel warmer from a different ckt? You should be able to plug it into an outlet....if the GFI still trips...the towel warmer has an issue.

 

[MrMark]

I don't think that setup is legal for an additional reason: I don't like that the neutral for the towel warmer is not coming in the conduit or cable that supplies the V+. I questoin whether the NEC allows such a setup where all the wires supplying that towel warmer are in different cables.

When you say 4 wire romex you are really refering to 12 2 2 with ground NM, which actually has two complete circuits in it. The ground wire is not counted when refering to NM so 12-3 is 3 wire NM.

 

[MrMark]

bd.....your lucky....the guys were being gently on you....

Doing what you wanted to do is about akin to using white wire as the 120Vac hot in your house.....

But as Falcon said, it sounds like something else is wrong. If you have a red wire....and a white wire going to your towel warmer....then internally in the towel warmer....power comes in on the red...goes out on the white....regardless of where the white is tied to the a common....without a different path somewhere, the currents should match.....something else is wrong.

Have you tried using an extension cord and widow maker to power the towel warmer from a different ckt? You should be able to plug it into an outlet....if the GFI still trips...the towel warmer has an issue.

There is a different path. That is the whole point. The neutral that supplies the towel controller does not pass through the controller to the warmer and then return back through the controller. Of course it cannot work.

It might have paid to read the directions on this before allowing someone to wire it up in such a crazy manner. I hope you didn't pay this guy too much to do this job.

To the towel warmer controller, it looks like there is a dead short to power. It probably pops instantaneously.

 

[mrb]

is there a box behind the floor controller with room for a small relay? I am bringing this up for discussion only and am not telling you to do this. Powering the coil of a relay from the load side of the controller gfci would be ok and not trip the gfci. wiring the contacts of the relay to the incoming power and red wire would be ok as you are just creating a switch loop and the current going out the red wire is not passing through the controller's gfci. picking the neutral back up where this cable in question originates is ok because its all the same circuit. The towel bar still has gfci protection from the gfci breaker supplying this circuit. it will work and would be safe without defeating any gfci protection.

 

[bd8134]

Great thanks.
I will run a new supply from an adjacent box and terminate the resulting unused wires.

Is what I did and everything works correctly with no dodgy use of the ground wire. No disabling of the GFCI required and everything to code. The floor and towel wire is on another circuit than first intended but the amperage is low and on a 20A low use circuit.
It would better if I had seen that it had a GFCI when I bought it but so much was going on, life..
I had considered an isolator or relay just for the towel warmer but it just seemed as something else to go wrong and then I would have to dig into what was required for code..
The add-on relay that Sunstat sells would not have worked, that also had a GFCI built in.
Now I can get back to working on my car..

 

[acer66]

This reminds me of one of the worst wiring jobs I ever saw.
They used 14/2 romex to wire a 3 way switch and the ground was the hot.
Instead of using a j box for the wire coming from the switch all the romex just came out of the drywall.
The wires were just tied together and they did not even bother to wrap some tape around the hot bare ground, but they mudded nicely around the romex.