'02 Vita Spa L780C Trips Gfi

[uncledave]

Hello all,

I have a '02 Vita Spa L780C portable spa, 220V that trips the GFI once or twice a month. I did replace the GFI upon the advise of the spa repair guy, but it continues to trip.

The repair guy said it is possibly the heater causing this or perhaps the control circuit board. Since these are expensive parts, I sure would like to hear your perspective on this and perhaps if you know how to troubleshoot it properly.

All the other features work fine, but I wanted to hear from you guys before I start replacing parts.

Thanks!

Dave

[Kenny W]

How often does the spa trip. once a week, twice. Have you noticed if it only does it while heating or another function? Is you GFCI outside in its own box? If so did anyone check the main panel breaker? Verify that all electric feed are good first. Check current draw of spa with it heating and all pumps running on high speed with a ammeter.

You can power down the spa and remove the heater from the circuit and try running it that way for a test. Also try if spa is equipped unplugging the ozonator.

What brand of spa is it? Who made the control system If you find any info

[uncledave]

How often does the spa trip. once a week, twice. Have you noticed if it only does it while heating or another function? Is you GFCI outside in its own box? If so did anyone check the main panel breaker? Verify that all electric feed are good first. Check current draw of spa with it heating and all pumps running on high speed with a ammeter.

You can power down the spa and remove the heater from the circuit and try running it that way for a test. Also try if spa is equipped unplugging the ozonator.

What brand of spa is it? Who made the control system If you find any info

Hi, thanks for answering, Kenny.

The breaker trips very seldom, 1 or 2 times a month, never when I'm out there, and the way I find out about it is when I go to use the spa; the water is not hot.

The GFI is inside, and it runs out to a cut off next to the unit. All Cutler-Hammer boxes and breakers. I have not had the electrician to check everything out, I'llhave to do that, and know a good guy. He can also check the current draw.

I'll also unhook the heater, the ozonator etc one at a time and see what happens.

The spa is about 8+ yrs old, made by Vita Spa, model L780C, but I don't know who made the controls. I'll look in the box and see. I do know that the control box has Vita printed on it, but don't know if they made the circuit board.

Thanks for your thought,

Dave

[PreservedSwine]

You've got a tough problem to track down.

Could be anything- an insect running accross the circuit board, a drop of condensation in the wrong spot, even a faulty light bulb (if it's 110v ac), or an extremely intermittent failure of any component...

Try running a current leakage test. It's the only way to see if anything is leaking more milli-amps than is considered normal- since you're never going to be there when it actually trips.

You'll need a quality meter capable of measuring mill-amps via the meter leads, with very good accuracy. Running this test requires disconnecting the ground- so if the GFCI fails while there IS considerable current leakage- you can get shocked.

Disconnect any external bonding wire to the spa-

You'll then need to break to ground circuit to the spa by disconnecting the ground wire at the spa. Set your meter to the appropriate setting (On my Beckman HD110T it's 20m/10a), and have the leads in the appropriate places on the meter. Put one lead on the ground wire running to the GFCI panel (that you just disconected), and the other on the ground bar on the spa. You're measuring the current traveling through the ground wire. A GFCI trips at about 5 milliamps. Anything over 0.5ma is considered defective. You can disconnect components one at a time if you find anything over 0.5 to isolate the faulty component.