GFCI alarms? - Electrician Talk - Professional Electrical Contractors Forum

charlie s. · 01-27-2009, 05:48 PM

Never have been asked to solve anything like this, not my line of work. Your help would be much appreciated.

A commecial building with 4 heat tape/wire in 4 roof drains wired to 4 30amp GFCI's. The gfi's have tripped twice in 2 years causing damage to drain system. I need an alarm to sound when any 1 of the 4 breakers trip. A local supplier says to use a shunt and alarm in the panel to a gfi meant for the heat tape. Wouldent the gfi still trip before the shunt breaker does meaning no alarm would sound? He also said there is no GFI shunt, yet I see some stuff online from squareD using the words "ground fault alarm". sounds like what I need but the panel is seimmens. Is this a monitoring system solution or a breaker solution? I am not familiar with either.

thanks, Charlie

mattsilkwood · 01-27-2009, 07:17 PM

i would use relays off the load side of the gfi with your alarm hot through the nc contacts.

so in other word when your gfi trips your relay drops out and makes the alarm circuit. cheap and simple

leland · 01-27-2009, 07:25 PM

Ditto. Or send it to the alarm/security panel, Now you have remote monitoring for the weekends.

MDShunk · 01-27-2009, 09:35 PM

You can order most molded case circuit breakers with a "bell alarm contact". Takes up an extra pole space, and has a set of contacts that make when the breaker trips. If Square D add "-2100" to the end of the breaker part number.

mattsilkwood · 01-28-2009, 09:56 AM

thats pretty cool marc, i dont think ive ever seen anything like that

MDShunk · 01-28-2009, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattsilkwood

thats pretty cool marc, i dont think ive ever seen anything like that

I was an electrician at a gold plating plant for a number of years, and we used the GFCI's with the alarm contact for the bath heaters quite extensively. The contact was just switching a PLC input to put a warning on the HMI. It wouldn't shut the line down unless the bath temp started to drop below spec. The warning gave an electrician a chance to change out the heater while the line was still running.

te12co2w · 01-29-2009, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MDShunk

You can order most molded case circuit breakers with a "bell alarm contact". Takes up an extra pole space, and has a set of contacts that make when the breaker trips. If Square D add "-2100" to the end of the breaker part number.

Damn, this counts as my something new today.