Electrical woes...breaker box what??

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by Myka

Thanks for all the continued information. I found out the house was built in 1958, so it's pretty old! I haven't checked the panel yet to see what gauge the wires are.

Mike, the plan is to add two 15 amp breakers each running to a GFCI receptacle. The only reason I havent' installed the GFCI receptacle I have is because I am worried about nuisance trips. I work out of province, and the tank sitter only comes by Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

1958, that's about the same age as my old house! Built well structurally, but I've found some scary stuff with the electrical. I've been gradually doing upgrades to the wiring after hiring an electrician to replace the main panel. Much of the old wiring was the black 'tar' insulated stuff but I've replaced most of that. There are still a couple of wire runs that are two wire with no ground, very scary. Thankfully I do have a 100 amp service, but the old panel that I had replaced was totally full, no extra holes for circuits. In fact, the previous owners had to physically switch the wiring in the panel depending on whether they wanted to use the dryer or the air conditioner. We're talking a 220 volt circuit with very large gauge wiring here that had to be rewired every time the chosen appliance was required! Anyhow, I've got plenty of extra room for circuits now.

I can understand your reluctance regarding the GFCI receptacle. I ran my system without them as well for longer than I'd care to admit, but I now have two protected circuits running the tank components. I recall having the GFCI trip when one set of my T5HO lamps would switch on (or off) through the timer power bar. Not sure whether the culprit was the lights or the power bar, but I only use one set of T5s currently and there's been no problem. My 250 watt MH on magnetic ballasts & timers work like a charm, never a hint of tripping the device. The odd time the GFCI has tripped when I unplug the air pump running my skimmer but since I'm there when that happens it's not an issue. I'm not away that often either, so there's less of a chance of disaster due to a nuisance trip. They've never tripped on me unless I've unplugged or plugged a component in or the issue with the lights switching on the timer. They've always reset automatically after a whole house power outage.