Long & Awful Tragedy

[MrMasonic]

As most husbands do, I tried to please my wife by getting this hot tub she wanted. Everything worked great on location so I had it moved to our house. The old owner just cut it off at the whip. So, what was left in there was reused. An electrician came over and wired it in. There were two six gauge wires and a 10 gauge romex. So, he wired the two six gauge to a 50 amp gfi and the other romex into a 15 amp gfi. Well, the breaker kept tripping so he opened up the panel. The romex was stranded into the neutral of the hot tub. In short, what was supposed to be a neutral got 15 amps of fury. After this delightful discovery and another trip to Home Depot the once romex wires shoved into the neutral became a 6 gauge running to the neutral on the panel. Now the 50 amp breaker just trips every time. Tried unplugging all the pumps and heaters off of the control box. Still trips.... I’m just going to guess that the control box got fried and I should get a new hot tub or tell her to sit in the cold fiberglass soup bowl and smile. Any suggestions on possibly fixing this?

[Sam]

If you disconnect everything and it still trips, it's either wired wrong or a bad breaker.  I'm not a tech though so I'm probably not the best person to advise.

[Jacuzzi Jim]

  Confirm neutral wire is connected to the breaker!!!! Not the neutral bar.   If it is then follow below.  Also confirm you have proper voltage coming into the breaker. 

  Does it trip right away, or a few seconds after you turn it on?  Like mentioned, un-hook the power from the spa and leave the wires hanging not touching anything and turn the breaker on.   Does it trip?  If yes there is a breaker issue, if no then  confirm 110v on each power lead red and black.  Kill power then hook the wires back up and unhook the two leads going to the heater. Turn power back on.  Does it trip?  Yes = not the heater, and possibly something else. No = possibly a bad heater.

   It's a matter of elimination.   But if the power is hooked up and nothing like pumps, ozone and heater are connected and it still trips.   Then possibly a bad board.     

[bud16415]

First off your electrician should have not connected anything to power until he understood what was on the other end. The person selling it to you should have explained it was rigged up and not at all to code. You should have found or pulled some wiring drawings so you could have understood what your tubs requirement was.

Now that it is a mess you should be hiring someone that knows what they are doing and how your model of tub works and they will have to trouble shoot the problem and repair and replace what needs to be fixed.

Sound like you had 240v to somewhat the right place without a neutral you then had 120v run to the neutral as a dead short. Any number of things could have been energized incorrectly and what is shocking is you say it trips the breaker every time. When something trips the breaker that is a sign of something not being right and resetting it and trying again isn’t going to solve the problem only make it worse.

You didn’t say if the GFCI was also tripped or only the breaker? Did you reset the GFCI after the first incident? Did it even trip?

Get a new electrician?

There is some good news and that is no one was hurt.

Welcome to the forum.   

[karismom]

Ouch.

I know nothing about the specifics. Read Jacuzzi Jim's reply post and got a headache, lol. So here is my little bit of advice, if it helps.

One thing (among many) that I learned from this forum was to hire an electrician who knew what the hell he was doing in terms of hot tubs. I also was given very specific information from where I bought the hot tub, to give to the electrician. I asked them for a referral to an electrician and they gave me the names of a couple that they routinely used. That's who I hired. Maybe a couple hundred more dollars than if I got one off craigslist, but worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.

[bud16415]

One problem with projects like this is you get the handyman guy many times. The big time electrical contractor is doing big jobs wiring homes and businesses from the ground up. He doesn’t want to send a guy out with a pick and shovel and have him spend a day crawling around under your house for a couple hundred bucks. They will do it but will have to charge enough to make it worth while. It is the same trying to get a concrete company to come out and pour a 10x10 pad in the back yard. They want to do a big job as they have crews and big equipment.

Whenever you have a small job it is really important to make sure your guy knows what he is doing. As an example in this project most worthy contractors would not reuse the old wire that came with the tub. They wouldn’t see two wires and a romex and assume anything as soon as they saw that they would say what’s up with this and then figure it out and do it proper with new wire sized properly.