Ceiling fan pops gcfi

[x00018]

The room has a cgfi breaker the opens when I shut off my ceiling fan. The switch is a 3 position rotary switch. I replaced it with a rotary from another manufacturer and still the problem exists. I replaced the fan with the same results. I replaced the breaker and that didn't help. I put a standard light switch in place of the rotary switch and now it works fine except I have to use the pull chain to change speeds. If I put the new rotary back in it opens again.

I am stumped. Can someone clear the fog in my head over this?

[reddog552]

GF breaker

GFCI + cealing fan+ speed control= trouble. The breaker is sencing voltage changes it dosent like.

[Uncle Cracker]

Reddog is right. You don't need a GFCI for a ceiling fan. However, if the same circuit is used for a spa, bath or kitchen circuit, you probably cannot remove it. If not, then I'd sh*tcan the GFCI.

[Rand]

My understanding is that in new(er) construction gfci is required for bedrooms. This is because people tend to plug powerstrips and multiple items into an outlet and then stuff the wires under their bed. Since the wires are hidden from view any damage goes unnoticed and can become a fire hazard.

If you can live with that small risk then I agree with Uncle Cracker, get rid of the gfci for that circuit. You may have to put it back when/if you sell the house so don't throw it away.

[williamr]

My understanding is that in new(er) construction gfci is required for bedrooms. This is because people tend to plug powerstrips and multiple items into an outlet and then stuff the wires under their bed. Since the wires are hidden from view any damage goes unnoticed and can become a fire hazard.

If you can live with that small risk then I agree with Uncle Cracker, get rid of the gfci for that circuit. You may have to put it back when/if you sell the house so don't throw it away.

ARC Fault Circuit Breaker for bedrooms --Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) for wet locations. The AFCB is designed to detect even low current arcing -- it's a different animal -- about $45 each I think.

This is according to Electrical Code Simplified -- 23 Edition of the Ontario Electrical Safety Code. (Page 67)

If the fan is in a wet location -- move the fan to another circuit -- but don't move plugs off a GFCI if they can be reached from a wet location. My $.02

[Uncle Cracker]

As a sidenote, I know in my house that the fans are wired on the light circuits, not with the wall outlets. If this is the same in your case, then you won't be risking anything by taking out the GFCI. It's better to have the fan on the light circuit, because if they were not, and you have light kits on the fans that are switched by wall switches, you would then have two different circuits wired into the fans, and might inadvertently turn off only one breaker when servicing, and get a shock. (Of course this would not be the case if everything in the room was on the same circuit.)

[x00018]

Thanks for all the feedback folks

This is a bedroom and a newer home that does require what I thought was a GFCI but I guess may be arc fault. The strange thing is my other 3 bedrooms all have the same setup (same fan and same rotary switch and GFCI) but do not trip the breaker. The replacement fan in my first post is now one of the other bedroom fans and it works great. The bedroom in question has 2 GFCI's with half the plugs and lights on 1 and the rest on the other. The fan circuit is on the dry side of the room, (bathroom on the other side) so I think I will try a standard breaker as a test.

Thanks for all the good ideas.

[newood2]

Another option maybe is to exchange the fan for one with wireless remote and wire it to a regular wall switch. Most of the time I leave the switch in the on position and use the remote to control the light and fan speed. Works great

[Tom Slick]

Have you always had this problem or is it a new problem?

Side note,
you can't change it now but good pratical electrical design doesn't put lights (i'm assuming your fan also has lights) on the same circuit as the recepticals. If you happen to overload the circuit and trip the breaker you can't turn on the lights to safely exit the room. It's common to have lights and recpts. on the same circuit but that is purely a simplicity/cost decision.

[Slik Geek]

A GFI only senses a current imbalance. If the current flowing in the hot lead varies beyond a preset threshold from the the current in the neutral lead, it will activate and open the circuit. x00018: If you indeed have a GFI that is activating, I'd recommend determining why - for safety's sake. You are somehow getting a leakage current path.

I installed a ceiling fan in three bedrooms - which included installing new switch boxes in the walls and boxes in the ceilings, plus conduit between. In one bedroom, the only convenient spot for power was from a bathroom lamp circuit next to the bedroom. The bathroom light was on a GFI circuit - after the GFI outlet (and thus within its protection circuit).

When I flipped the breaker on, the GFI tripped. It took quite a bit of investigation, but I finally discovered that the neutral wire insulation to the fan had gotten scuffed during the wire pull. It was shorting to the conduit about 10 feet away from the fan. Even though neutral and the grounded conduit are at the same potential (at least at one point in the circuit), there was enough of a difference to cause a current imbalance to trip the GFI.

[reddog552]

Gfci

http://members.tripod.com/~masterslic/FAQ-2/6.htmlGood info.

[x00018]

Have you always had this problem or is it a new problem?

Side note,
you can't change it now but good pratical electrical design doesn't put lights (i'm assuming your fan also has lights) on the same circuit as the recepticals. If you happen to overload the circuit and trip the breaker you can't turn on the lights to safely exit the room. It's common to have lights and recpts. on the same circuit but that is purely a simplicity/cost decision.

The fan had been in place for about 2 years without a problem, but we do not use it very often. After the problem started it would only pop the breaker about 1 in 10 times so it may or may not be really a new problem. The breaker controls the overhead lights and half the recepticles.

[x00018]

Thanks for the GREAT info

http://members.tripod.com/~masterslic/FAQ-2/6.htmlGood info.

This forum is awesome. And NOT just ww

[jseklund]

I think Slik may have had the best answer- you have a problem and it does not appear to be the fan since you swapped it into the other room and it works fine. My next step would be to check the speed control- as Reddog said, GFCI + cealing fan+ speed control= trouble.

My first question is, what are you using for a speed control? Is it a dimmer switch? I know it may or may not sound stupid to you, but I've seen many people using dimmer switches to control voltage on fans, and it's BAD. You may actually have a fan speed control but that question wasn't asked yet, so I thought I would. Next, is the speed control of sufficient rating? These controls can be expensive, and it is tempting to go cheap- but if you have something that draws too much current you could be in trouble with the cheap speed control. Maybe pull the suspect control out and wire it into one of the locations where the fan is working properly at the moment. You may find that suddenly those circuits trip?

The next option, is to replace the GFCI. Maybe it's a faulty interupt?

And finally, you'll have to go through the wiring and look for breaks, etc. This can be next to impossible to do physically if it is all new construction wiring- it's probably stapled to the 2X4's in the walls and unmovable. You will have to investigate by pulling the end of the wires where you can and isolating which wire(s) cause the circuit to trip. Fun.

I know it's tempting to find a quick fix and forget it. Since it's in a wall and people don't see it, it's easy to forget the problems electricity can cause. I had a friend explain to me once that we can never see electricity- when you see the blue/white arcs that we typically associate with electricity- it is actually the air around the current being super-heated into a plasma. Electricity won't travel through air without heating it to reduce the resistance, and it has the ability to heat air almost instantly into plasma. As a matter of fact, I saw how quickly this happens once when I tried to cut what I thought was a dead wire with some metal wire cutters. It sparked, and luckily I was not hurt. In 1/10th of a second the breaker tripped and it was over as fast as it began. After, I looked at my wire cutters and noticed a groove (about the size of the wire) burned right into the metal- deep. It's amazing how fast and how hot electricity can get when something goes wrong.