We added an outdoor fireplace and trying to wire it up. I am repurposing an old generator connection on the outside of the house. Here is the current setup
10-3 wire from panel to the outside junction box. From the junction box it's solid 12 awg to the actual plug (non-GFCI). I removed the 30amp breaker in the panel and replaced with a 20amp GFCI. White neutral is connected to the panel neutral bus (verified not ground). The black wire from the 10-3 is connected to breaker. I pulled the 12 awg wire today through conduit that my landscaper left so I know it's good.
Inside the junction box I connected black/black, red/red, white/white, and green/green.
Outlet (non-GFCI) is wired black to bronze, white to silver, green to ground. No other circuit or connections are inline or connected.
Turning on the breaker everything is fine, hit the test button on the breaker and it trips like it should. Reset the breaker and walk outside and plug in my tester, 2 lights showing correct. Press the test button and circuit does not trip but plugging in even a 60 watt lamp causes this circuit to trip.
I'm not an electrician but I have done plenty of electrical work. Any help is appreciated. Literally the only break between the panel and the outlet is where the 10awg to 12awg wire connection was made.
I did test Hot/Ground @ 123v, and hot neutral at 123v. Neutral/ground tested 0.
FWIW the red hot leg on a completely separate GCFI breaker acts exactly the same way.
Best Answer
Last I checked, (I don't use GFCI breakers, normally, I just put a GFCI as the first thing in line) the neutral needs to connect to the GFCI breaker neutral connection (and depending on design, you may need to connect a pigtail from the breaker to the neutral buss) otherwise the GFCI cannot possibly work.
A GFCI compares the current on the hot and neutral, and trips the GFCI function on a difference between them (5 mA nominal) - if it's not seeing the neutral return current, it will see an imbalance from the hot it does see and the neutral which it will see as 0mA if the neutral wire is not connected to it correctly.