Chip C.

I appreciate all the great advice from you guys! He got a great deal on the Landmark ($250) and it looks like it will be a good spa for them on their budget (once we get it cleaned up). It belonged to a widow lady... and I have to tell you this thing stinks inside like a West Texas outhouse in mid-August! She says it had been sitting with stagnant water in it for several years and she had caught her 2 young grand sons ages 6 and 9, using it as a urinal for quite some time. Boys will be boys! After we get it running we will clean it out good and run some Spa System Flush through it, decontaminate, and replace the filters and cover and should be good to go for under $1000 total!

My son-in-law just bought a used Hot Springs (Watkins Mfg) Landmark and I got volunteered to hook it up for them. But the 240V subpanel was all rusted out and non-functional. This spa was wired up with a setup I had not seen before. It has 2 GFCI breakers in the subpanel, a 30A which must be for the heater, and a separate 20A breaker for the pump. When we buy a replacement disconnect subpanel, do we have to go with the same setup (2 breakers) or can I just run it with a conventional 50A subpanel with just one double pole breaker? Greatly appreciate any advice from someone familiar with these spas.

Absolutely not!! Are you nuts?

Would that distance be at least 10 ft. away but no more than 2o ft. away?

I can tell you what I would do. I'd start by replacing the duplex outlet-- they're cheap, and if you're lucky, that was the problem and you will be done with it. I've seen this happen before when debris has gotten in an outlet causung an intermittant issue. Might also just be a loose terminal connection.

Greg, at least your story had an apparent happy ending (you're still here!) unlike the poor lady. For the sins of her husband's failure to follow the National Electrical Code, she indeed paid the ultimate penalty== death in the electric chair. The moral of the story is that if you play by the rules, you never have to worry about being caught with your pants (or panties) down. Chip

When I was a teenager, the neighbor lady (a rather large woman) got electrocuted while sitting on the toilet. Her husband had rigged her up a heated toilet seat from old electric blanket parts. Water and electricity can be tricky.

We used PVC conduit. Sheathed cable is not permitted inside buried condut.

All done and works perfect. The Connecitut Electric disconnect box has a branch drop for auxillary 110V circuit, so I also added an outdoor electrical outlet while I was at it.

Stuart, I think all of the discussion assumed (correctly) that a spa is always on a dedicated circuit. A self-contained portable spa can have individual components that run on both 240V and 120V in the USA (you don't have 120V in the UK, as I recall). Some jurisdictions do not permit direct burial cable. I have not seen steel-armored wire, but sounds like it falls into that category. PVC conduit is dirt cheap.

I apologize for using multisyllabic words. Spurious = having a similar characteristics but in a different form. In AC electrical theory, besides the common factors of Ohm's Law that everyone learns in grade school (resistance, voltage, and amperage) there are other spurious effects (related to Hysteresis) to consider such as reactance and impedance. GFCI devices, which were never designed with reactance in mind, sometimes have trouble with these effects, especially in high-current applications where they are amplified. I am real surprised you never heard of errant GFCI tripping caused by reactive loads. See, an electrical motor is basically a generator in reverse, and does produce a reactive effect of its own on the circuit that can, and sometimes does cause the otherwise good GFCI device to function erratically-- somewhat like a woman with a monthly hormonal imbalance. Having a 240V motor, 240V resistance heater, and 120V UV ozonator on the same circuit is sometimes problematic for a common GFCI/breaker. This is because a GFCI is by design acutely sensitive, and designed to detect infitessimally small deviations from the norm. This is not news.

Craig, I could say "brilliant minds think alike" but that would sound arrogant. I guess I'm on the right track though! --Chip

I don't presume to know more than a professional, but must take exception with your statement that GFCIs don't nusiance trip unless they are busted. Highly reactive loads such as electric motors can cause nuisance tripping of GFCI breakers from what I have been told. An aquaintence of mine runs a spa cleaning service, and he tells me that he hears this complaint frequently. If you think about how an electric motor works, it makes a lot a sense that they not only put a load on, but also produce spurios electrical effects that can apparently "trick" a GFCI/breaker. It is compounded in spas with mixed 240V/120V components on different legs of the same circuit. I think separating out the functions by letting the breaker handle current overload, and using a dedicated GFCI in the disconnet box makes a lot of sense. It is my understanding that a passive/inductive GFCI is much less susceptical to errant tripping in high current applications, especially with mixed voltages like some spas have. As far as cost is concerned, the Conneticut Electric GFCI disconnect unit compares well. A 50A GFCI breaker runs 80-100 clams, whereas a regular double pole breaker runs only 10-20 clams. Tops, I am spending 20 clams more for a more reliable system, designed specifically for hot tubs. I will forego 2 lunches at Jack-in-the-Box to finance this added expenditure. I guess another question would be, would component makers develop an inductive GFCI disconnect device if there were zero demand for it because errant false tripping did not exist as a problem?

I will keep that in mind, but there really are not a lot of corrections or external factors to take into consideration in a circuit as simple as a portable spa hookup. Since I am using approved THHN #6 CU, in an oversized raceway, the only external consideration is the length of my circuit, which is not excessive from what I have heard. Because of the reactive loads that spa circuits present and the fact that my ozonator runs on a 120V leg, I have decided to use a standard 50A double-pole breaker in my house service panel rather than a GFCI breaker, and use an inductive GFCI device (what you call an RCD in merry old England) with separate high-current contactor as the disconnect panel. This should reduce or eliminate the errant false tripping that is so common with spa owners that I have conversed with. (I first read about this type of subpanel on Jim Arguna's website by the way, and I agree 100% with him-- it's the way to go, an elegant solution to a nagging problem). There are a couple of these types of disconnect panels on the market; I found one made by Connecticut Electric for about a hundred clams that is big enough for my spa (50A) and looks like it will be just the ticket. It also has an integrated 110 volt breakered branch circuit that I don't really need, but if I ever want to add another outdoor outlet for the Weed-Whacker, its there. Yes, I will get the required inspection and have already bought my permit so the county got their blood money. There is one extreme danger in homeowner wiring: I have assured my wife that the life insurance premium has been paid, in case I get mugged for the copper wire on the way back from Lowes.

I have no doubt that what you have observed is true, but think about it for a moment. I could honestly say that all of the prisoners I have ever seen are convicts. Also true, but most people are neither prisoners nor criminals. So, when you see sub-par wiring, it is a fairly safe assumption that it was not professionally done. But I doubt when you've seen good wiring, you interrogate the homeowner or past owners of the property to find out if the work was done by a licensed electrician or just a job well done by a regular Joe. If you were to inspect the electrical work I have done on my own property, the only difference between my work and a pro is that since I am such a neatness fanatic, everything has to be perfectly straight and organized, even in the service panel. I go way too far, and would never make any money as a pro electrician because I spend way too much time on it making it not only function properly, but look pretty. But I don't pay myself much, so I can get away with spending a lot of time on it. On the other hand, I work with all kinds of professional tradesmen on a daily basis, and am sorry to report that I see sub-par work from time to time even amongst those well-paid for their work. On a job we finished last week, the insulation contractor had to leave early before finishing up on one of the outside walls. The sheetrock crew arrived, and installed drywall over the uninsulated wall. The homeowner will never know about it, although over the lifetime of the home, it will cost them thousands in wasted heating. The worst part, when the insulation guy came back the next day, he was overjoyed that he did not have to finish. I could go on and on with most all of the different trade disciplines, but am straying already too far off topic and dinner is getting cold.