Electrical – What to put in 60A GFCI breakers in Subpanel

electrical-panel

Update: I was asking "What to put in 60A GFCI breakers in Subpanel?"
Answer: maybe The main panel! That is, the main panel would be the subpanel of the 60A GFCI breaker. It's like the main panel and subpanel got swapped!

Detail. I was asking what to put in 60A GFCI breaker in subpanel in case I'd need to swap the 30A to the bath heaters and 60A to other loads. Here is an idea (Harper and others familiar with my setup).

My purely 240v main panel has this remaining loads (all are 30A breakers and all using AWG 10 even to the lights):

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What if I'd separate the main breaker and body in the main panel. Then the main breaker would connected to the subpanel. And the main body in main panel would become the subpanel of the 60A output of the original subpanel. Here:

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So it's like the subpanel and main panel become swapped. And the original main panel would now be the output of 60A of this original subpanel:

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I'd use 60A GFCI breaker number 5. This can totally eliminate all the wire nuts in the original panel above which is due to 3 circuits joined into one breaker. I'd put them in original breaker.

In essence. What to put in 60A GFCI breakers in Subpanel? The main panel (minus the main breaker which will be connected to the subpanel, but rest of main panel will be output of the 60A GFCI breaker).

This way, the entire house will be protected by GFCI. Not only that. Even the entire main panel chassis will be protected too (and it can be covered without fear of electrified chassis since it can trip the 5mA GFCI).

But big question. Can the 60A GFCI breaker have the following loads (the remaining original panel loads and the ones in GFCI breaker 5 to be transferred and added to the loads)?

  1. Aircon 2.4hp room 2 (9A) (number 1 to 5 is from remaining loads)
  2. Aircon 2.5hp sala (10A)
  3. Aircon 1.5hp room 3 (5A)
  4. Aircon 1hp room 1 (3A)
  5. Lights ground floor (1A), 2nd floor (0.5A), attic (0.5A)
  6. Room 2 outlets (3A) (from original subpanel no. 5 GFCI breaker)
  7. Kitchen outlets (0.5A) (from original subpanel no. 5 GFCI breaker)
  8. Attic outlets (2A) (from original subpanel no. 5 GFCI breaker)

total load is 35A that will use the 60A GFCI breaker output. Again each wiring is AWG 10 and each non GFCI breaker in original panel is 30A.

Will this work? This way the aircons are each in their original 30A breaker.

Brilliant idea or technically flawed? Lol.

original message yesterday:

Last year I bought 6 GFCI breakers. 2 pcs are 60A, 4 pcs are 30A. I initially bought the 60A at amazon because it is the cheapest. I wasn't thinking then about the wire and breaker matching then as I didn't know about it yet.

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These are my exact loads presently running. I turned off all the breakers because I just put the 100A main breaker.

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Bigger view.

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I'm presently using each 60A breaker for 6000W bath heater (I have 2 heaters, each connected separately to 60A breaker as shown in the actual breaker pics). I know 6000W/240v= 25A. Wire used for all are AWG 10. My question. Someone told me I must use 30A for the 25A heater. But even if you have a single TV say 1A, you still use 10A breaker in the house for that single load. So how come I can't use the 25A bath heater in the 60A ampere when it's the only load? I mean, the wiring to the 60A won't overload because the only load is the 25A bath heater and nothing else put on that 60A breaker. At least it should trip if there is a short in the heater. But the AWG 10 which has capacity of 30A to 35A won't melt at all because the only load is 25A heater. So why can't you use it on the 60A breaker? NEC may not allow it. But what is the logical and technical reasoning for it?

Also in case I'll swap the 30A for the heater. What would I put in the 60A GFCI breakers then, the TV or fridges? All the other 4 loads are just low enough that even when I combined many appliances in one breaker. It won't exceed 10A in the rest of the 4 30A GFCI breakers in above label pic.

Thank you.

Best Answer

The problem is the breaker needs to protect both the loads and the wires. There are (at least) 3 different ways your 25A heater could fail, requiring a breaker trip:

  • Short Circuit - That is easy. A short pulling hundreds of Amps (or whatever the service will supply) will trip a 60A breaker almost as fast as it would trip a 30A breaker. Good
  • Ground Fault - A ground fault will trip a GFCI breaker at very low current, no matter what the rating of the breaker is (30A vs. 60A). Good
  • Moderate overload - This is the real problem. If you have some sort of fault in the heater - perhaps a component starting to fail but not totally failing (because if it totally failed it would either fail open - safe - or fail closed - short circuit). BAD In this situation, you could have 40A or 50A flowing through and it would not trip the 60A breaker. But it would melt your wires and start a fire.