240 gfci breaker troubleshooting help

[DFBrews]

Have a head scratcher.
Building an electric brew kettle using a 5500 watt hot water heating element.

Built a subpanel and control box that plugs into my dryer outlet. Using a 50 amp gfci spa panel for some don't electrocute myself protection. With a potentiometer controlled solid state relay to control the power into the element.



anyway
fired it up 2 nights ago and ran some water up to a boil everything worked perfectly.

Fast forward to today and I plugged it in and it tripped the breaker immediately. Not the breaker in the main panel but just my gfci. Ohmed out everything have no continuity where it shouldn't be all connections right and tight

I then disconnected all wiring on the outlet side of the breaker and it still trips. Measured 2 hot legs at the wall plug and getting 124.6 and 126.1 volts. Same volt reading on both the ground and neutral.


Is that voltage difference enough to trip the breaker? Any other ideas as to what could be causing the issue?

[Wulf202]

Check for broken neutral or ground

[SideShow Bob]

Did you wire it in properly ? Recheck & retighten all connections, if it worked once, a loose connection at the curly neutral to the neutral bus is likely the problem.

[DFBrews]

Did you wire it in properly ? Recheck & retighten all connections, if it worked once, a loose connection at the curly neutral to the neutral bus is likely the problem.

Triple checked all connections. Line in is all tight. Not using the neutral on the element side so it is terminated.

[SideShow Bob]

That is your problem. The load side neutral does not go to the neutral bus. ( From the load side of the breaker.)
Also, if that is a GFCI breaker, it looks like it is missing the curled neutral that should go to the neutral bus. ( See the lower left of the illustration, it appears more of a zig zag.)

[DFBrews]

That is your problem. The load side neutral does not go to the neutral bus. ( From the load side of the breaker.)
Also, if that is a GFCI breaker, it looks like it is missing the curled neutral that should go to the neutral bus. ( See the lower left of the illustration, it appears more of a zig zag.)

the load side neutral is not being used at all. And the curled wire on the breaker Is stretched to make it to the neutral bus

[laportecharlie]

Looks to me that he has the load side neutral capped off at the bottom of the panel. I believe the wire he has going to the neutral buss is the "curled" wire. Might just be a bad GFI breaker.

[DFBrews]

Looks to me that he has the load side neutral capped off at the bottom of the panel. I believe the wire he has going to the neutral buss is the "curled" wire. Might just be a bad GFI breaker.

correct Charlie

have an an email into Home Depot see if they will swap out just the breaker or if I have to take everything apart and send them the entire panel

[DFBrews]

Here's my diagram like I said I can take the load side completely out and it still trips. If I pull the curly white from the neutral bus it does not trip

[DFBrews]

Now I'm confused!

My wiring in the first picture is
red and black hot leg go into their respective slots into the breaker
line in green ground goes to ground bus
white neutral goes to neutral bus
curly wire from gfci goes into neutral bus.

This set up with nothing on the load side still trips the breaker immediately.
Going to buy another breaker (at 100 bucks a pop ouch) and see if the problem continues.