And little electrical help for my upgrade...

FSU3NOLES28

FSU3NOLES28

New member
I'm upgrading to a 90 with a basement sump and my dad is going to be doing some electrical work for me. I had some specific questions on what way we should go...

He's adding a sub panel to my current box and planned on using 3 or 4 - 20 amp gfcis and 3 or 4 regular - 20 amp breakers. Do you guys think that is a good way to go? The other option was gfci breakers but that's quite a bit more expensive. I will spend it if I have to but if you guys think that is plenty then I will stick with this way.

Long term I plan on having 2 Radions, a pump to run water back upstairs, skimmer pump, heaters, probably an ato, a pump for mixing bowl water, and a controller.

I might run a second smaller tank later on for frags or something... But I'm not sure.
 
When dealing with water GFCI is the only way to go.....whether with circuit breakers or outlets....no exception
 
I would do the gfci on outlets. That way, you can have several independent gfci on the same breaker. If you daisy chain outlets or use a gfci breaker, one faulty piece of equipment brings the whole circuit down. If instead you use a traditional breaker and put several gfci outlets on it (wired independently) you have less chance of a single failure impacting the whole system.

I'd take that redundancy approach to the whole system. Start with two or three independent circuits and individual gfci for each piece of equipment on each circuit. Then divide your equipment into different functions and split it between the circuits such that if one circuit goes down, each major function is still partially intact.

So if you have two heaters, put one on each circuit. If you have the return pump on one circuit, put the closed loop or powerheads in the tank on the other one (so you still have some flow if either goes down). And so on.

Also, use brand name gfcis. Unless you enjoy fighting electrical fires. :D
 
Thanks for the tips guys.

Can i run a surge protector to one and have more than 1 piece of equipment plugged into a gfci? Id assume so...

Also how do i know how many pieces of equipment one gfci can properly handle?
 
gfcis are rated by maximum amps just like regular outlets. They typically come in 15 and 20 amp models. You can certainly plug a surge protector into one and plug several pieces of equipment into the surge protector, assuming your total load does not exceed the rating on the outlet or the surge protector (it probably won't, even on a 15 amp line, for a 90g tank).

But the point is, IMHO, it's best practice to have a single gfci for each piece of equipment, to avoid nuisance trips taking down your whole system.
 
Just had some electrical work done in my basement as well. I added a sub panel with 2 box coming off. Each box has 4 outlets. I split each box so that half are GFCI and half are regular. The thought being that I put my router and apex on a non-GFCI outlet so that if a GFCI outlet does trip, I will at least know about it via alarm (routed through my apex and router which should still be online).

I don't have the luxury of access to multiple circuits from where my sump is running. If I stretch it I can get to one outlet on a separate circuit. I'll put my CL pump on that one if I can reach.

The idea being to provide power redundancy as Nate says.
 
My dad's plan was to run 2 circuits with 2 boxes. Each circuit and box having a gfci and a standard 20 amp outlet. He would have the gfci tie into the standard outlet so if that has an issue, then the gfci would trip because they are tied in together. His idea is that if the gfci trips that would cut out the whole box. Basically to save from having to run 4 circuits.

Is that an ideal option for the size tank I'm running?

Or do I really need to have 4 individual 20 amp circuits?
 
If you can't put your controller on it's very own circuit, I'd spend the money and get a UPS for it (and any network hardware it depends on). No use having a controller on the net if a noisy ballast is going to trip your gfci and take it down twice a week...
 
FSU3NOLES28 said:
My dad's plan was to run 2 circuits with 2 boxes. Each circuit and box having a gfci and a standard 20 amp outlet. He would have the gfci tie into the standard outlet so if that has an issue, then the gfci would trip because they are tied in together. His idea is that if the gfci trips that would cut out the whole box. Basically to save from having to run 4 circuits.

Is that an ideal option for the size tank I'm running?

Or do I really need to have 4 individual 20 amp circuits?
Click to expand...

I would suggest NOT doing what your Dad wants to do. In each box, put two gfci outlets, and wire them independently of each other. This way, if there is a nuisance trip, it doesn't take a lot of stuff down. If you follow your Dad's plan, a nuisance trip will take down everything plugged into that box.

You don't HAVE to run separate circuits - separate circuits only gives you protection when a breaker trips. It's extremely rare for a breaker to false trip and usually when a breaker trips there's something major wrong. GFCIs, on the other hand, nuisance trip ALL THE TIME and when they trip it's usually a problem isolated to a single piece of equipment, so IMHO it doesn't make sense to wire a bunch of outlets to one GFCI as you'll be taking a whole bunch of equipment offline when one thing has a problem. This is why I like the plan of a bunch of independent gfcis vs. one gfci protecting a lot of standard outlets. Ideally you'd have a independent gfci for each piece of equipment but that's not always practical.
 
Agree with DWZM. GFI's are great and enemies a the same time. You don't want everything daisy-chianed to one GFI, have it trip, and loose lights, heat, flow, and control. Personally, I have a GFI outlet and a non-GFI outlet for my 65g. My "things I can't live without" are plugged into the non-GFI. ACjr, MP-10, and auto top-off. Everything else is plugged into the GFI. That way if something trips my GFI I still have flow and water, the two things that are impossible to life without with in any tank. I used to hae more problems with false-tripping with my halides, but it's pretty stable now with LEDs.

Just another thought for anyone considering using GFI breakers AND outlets, not necessarily the OP... I've been told by some EE's to NOT use both on the same circuit. For reasons I didn't understand, he explained that they can either encourage false trips, or prevent trips at all when you use 2 on the same series circuit. Multiple in parallel works fine, just not in series.
 
Reminder Jon....I have no idea why but some folks, myself included found difficulty with Radions running on a gfci outlet. Upon powering up, the outlet would trip.

I had our electrician install gfci breakers.
 
Lighting ballasts are a common source of false trips. Swapping brands of outlet sometimes cures the problem if you randomly happen upon a brand with a higher leakage current trip point.
 
Jacwil said:
Reminder Jon....I have no idea why but some folks, myself included found difficulty with Radions running on a gfci outlet. Upon powering up, the outlet would trip.

I had our electrician install gfci breakers.
Click to expand...

Yep. I've been looking into that as well. The Radions are going to be on a completely different circuit so that's a bit different scenario than I'm referring to.

Thanks dude!

I'm just wondering if perhaps the Amps on the outlets weren't high enough to support them to begin with? Sometimes bumping from 15 to 20 amps with better wire makes all the difference in the world.
 
Possible but I believe it was the issue Nate referred to regarding touchy outlets. I didn't want to keep troubleshooting/swapping out outlets so we went with the gfci breakers.
 
It's touchy outlets (coupled with noisy equipment).

GFCIs trip when the difference in current between the hot and neutral lines exceeds a (very small) value. It has nothing to do with the current rating on the GFCI or anything else on the circuit. Breakers are what trip when current rating is exceeded - GFCIs (and, indirectly, wire) are rated with a max current basically so you can match them properly to the breaker. If you exceed the max current on a GFCI, it will just catch on fire. :D With respect to tripping due to a ground fault, there's nothing inherently different between a 20A and a 15A GFCI outlet.

Justin, It's interesting that swapping to a GFCI breaker solved the problem as IME they have lower thresholds than GFCI outlets do in most cases.
 
a quick note that might help here. I've noticed that we often have to compair watts vs amp loads on our circuts. Try this out. There is a simple way to convert this. I use the P.I.E method at work all the time. So P (watts) = I (amps) x E (volts). so for an example I have a 500 watt heater and I want to know the amp draw at 110 volt supply
500 = (?) x 110. A little math here shows that by dividing my watts by the volts I can find my amp draw and in this case it is 4.54 amps.
Maybe this will help some of us when figuring out wiring.
 
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