I have a Morgan Spa with a Gecko circuit board. The 50 amp GFCI breaker tripped a couple of days ago and wouldn't reset. After replacing the breaker and checking the wire, it still would trip.

I started removing the leads from the circuit board for the 2 pumps, blower, heater, ozonator, lights, transformer, etc. until I had nothing connected but the grounding wires and the breaker still tripped. After I pulled off all of the ground wires (i.e, nothing connected to the board) the breaker held and didn't trip.

I got my meter out and started checking some stuff out and got a shock (literally) from the grounding wire disconnected from the circuit board but still connected to the grounding lug on the heater. I checked it with my meter and it was hot. I touched the end to the grounding wire coming from the breaker and it tripped the breaker. After resetting the breaker, I checked some other stuff with my meter and found that the junction box where the circuit board was and both grounding lugs on the heater were hot.

I assume this is a shorted out circuit board. Is this a correct assumption? Is there anything else I need to check before replacing the board? (BTW, where can I get a good quality one at a fair price?)

Thanks for any help you can provide!

disconnect both leads going to the heater element power first.

Then recheck your readings.

And use caution. You should never remove ground leads.

More likely than not, you have a bad heater element.

Disconnecting the heater element leads was one of the first things I tried and the breaker still wouldn't reset.

And there is nothing connected to the circuit board except the 2 load lines, the common, and the ground wire from the breaker. Yet there is still voltage in places it shouldn't be.

Obviously I'm not an expert on this, but how does the heater element cause voltage to transfer to places it shouldn't be when the leads to the heater aren't even connected?

There should be a component on that board marked 'Q11'. It's just about the 1 oclock position about 1/2" away from the incoming L2 connector.

Try removing the phillips head screw from Q11, lift it up so it doesn't touch the screw post. Try the measurements again.