I have a Jacuzzi SPA that is 4 years old. It is operating on 220V and has a Balboa 2" flow through heater. The GFCI on the panel located 15 feet away keeps tripping immediately upon power up. I disconnected the heater connection and the problem goes away. I made a resistance measurement between the heater electrical posts and the heater shell and am reading around 300K Ohms. Is this value too low and therefore the cause of my problems or could it be moisture in the conduit? I made sure all of my connections at the SPA and the panel are nice and tight and corrosion free.

Thanks in advance
Bruce

I`m not a spa Tech but I`m almost certain that there shouldn`t be ANY resistance between the electrical posts and the shell...this means that current is leaking to ground, tripping the GFI and stopping you getting shocked....so you need a new heater element..

sorry if it comes up twice. new here and think im having probs posting. anyway you should be getting in the range of 10 to 14 ohms across your element. definately bad element

As stated in my first post, the measurement was done between either post and the shell(ground). Anyone else have any comments?

Thanks
Bruce

Final comment.
Riddler was correct.

Your element has water in it which is what is giving you the 300k ohms to ground.

Well, I bought the new element from Spa Babes. GFCI still trips! I am now going to replace the GFCI.

Hold on a sec! Don't buy stuff you may not need yet.

Disconnect the wires from the element.

Do an ohm check from either/both heater element terminals to ground. Be absolutely certain you have a reading of INFINITY - (It should read as if it's connected to NOTHING).

Do this first before you spend another dollar on anything. It is entirely possible that you could have been shipped a defective element! It does happen! Don't replace the GFCI yet. These things are extremely sensitive and you don't want to spend $100 or more to find out it was doing it's job correctly.

Thanks,
Brian
SpaPartsNet.Com

I measured the new one before I put it in and it measured infinity. I have a very good Fluke meter so I trust the measurement.

Ok great.
Take that fluke meter.....

Go to your mains box.

Disconnect the wires from the GFCI.

Do an ohms check from L1 and L2 to ground (the wires that are enroute to the spa). Then do another from Neutral to ground.

They should all read the same... infinity. If so, then the gfci really is defective.

Thanks!

What started me looking at the heater element in the first place was that by disconnecting the heater element, the GFCI would not blow. I will do the ohm check on the 3 lines this weekend.

Bruce