Easytouch wiring and ground

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B

bizzle

Well-known member
Aug 31, 2017
244
Imperial, CA
I am finishing up my Easytouch 8 install.
I plan to control:
VS Pump
2 actuators: 3 way valves to control pool/spa/spillover
SWCG
Solar
water feature
2 pool lights
1 spa light
Fence lights
maybe heater eventually

I can not find any bonding wire for my pool that was installed in 1978.
The Easytouch panel is over 100 feet from the house and mounted to a fence that is separate from my house. The main panel is a few hundred feet from the Easytouch.

I drove a ground rod next to the equipment pad.
Do I need to use insulated ground wire to connect the ET8 to my ground rod or can I use bare copper?

I have a green wire in the conduit coming from the main panel to the ET8.
Do I cap that off or connect it to ground on the ET8 (resulting in a green ground wire from the main breaker to ET8 and a bare copper or insulated ground wire to the ground rod)?

I have two pool lights, one spa light, fence lights, and a GFCI convenience plug and a 20A double breaker.
Can I daisy chain all of the lights from the convenience plug so that they are all GFCI protected? Or should I buy different GFCI breakers for each light?
If I can daisy chain the lights, can I wire them all to individual relays (daisy chain from relay to relay) for automatic control?

I was going to wire the fence lights to a relay, the spa light to a relay, and am wondering whether I should wire each of my two pool lights to individual relays or together into one? Is there any benefit to wiring them separately?
 
B,

Just so that we are all on the same page... A Neutral wire, a Ground wire, and a Bonding wire are all three separate things...

The bonding wire has to do with pool structure and decking and is normally connected to an 'outside' lug on the side of the pump. Are you saying this bonding wire is not connected to your existing pump and can't be found? The bonding wire connection to the ET is a lug on the outside bottom of the enclosure.. This is not a grounding wire connection.

I was taught that the Neutral wire and the Ground wire should never be connected except at the main panel... I would use the Green wire from the main panel to connect to the Ground lug inside the ET. I see no reason for the grounding rod connection... (I honestly don't know if it is code or would cause an issue, but will reach out to someone to find out)...

Most pool builder installers wire any pool lights to the back of the GFCI convenience outlet...

The only benefit to wiring individual lights to individual relays is so that you can have them be different colors.. otherwise, they will be synced together and always be the same color..

Some unsolicited advice... Make sure that you route the power to the SWCG's transformer through the Pump/Filter relay so that the cell does not have power when the pump is off. If you have a VS pump it gets constant power from the CB and is not connected to the any relay..

I assume you have the IntelliFlo pump, if not, the EasyTouch will not be able to control it..

Thanks, for posting,

Jim R.
 
There is no bonding wire that I can find. There's nothing I can do about it now but I mention it so that there's no confusion if/when I post pictures or ask questions related to ground.

The reason I need a ground rod out at the equipment pad is because the sub panel (ET8) is attached to a separate structure from the main panel (main panel is on the house, sub panel is at the equipment pad in the backyard, on the fence, different structure not connected to the main panel).

Previously, the sub panel had the neutral and ground busses crossed and the green wire was capped off. I'm not sure if I leave it capped when I use a ground rod at the sub panel or if the ET8 is both grounded via the rod *and* back to the main.
 
The ground rod code for panels attached to a structure are as far as I know exempted if the panel is for pool equipment.

If there is no bonding loop on your pool then nothing should be connected to any of the bonding lugs.

As for the neutral and ground wires in the panels they should not be connected. Starting at the main panel in your house you should have 2 hot wires connected to a breaker, a white wire connected to the neutral bus, and the green to the grounding bus. (In the main panel of the house the neutral and grounding buses are tied together, that is unless there is another disconnect between the main panel and your meter)

At you first pool panel the two hot wires feed the main lugs on the panel. The neutral should be connected to the neutral bus and the green ground should be to the ground bus. The neutral bus should be electrically isolated from the ground bus. There should be no jumper between the two or large green screw in the neutral bus.

The same wire pattern should be followed to your easy touch panel.

You don't need the ground rod but if you leave it there DO NOT use bare copper wire to connect to it. Only use green insulated wire for any electrical grounding connections around pool equipment. You do not want anyone to confuse a grounding wire with a bonding wire.

How ever you wire the lights make sure they are GFCI protected.
 
Thank you.

I need to open up the main panel and make sure this ground wire is even a main ground. It's in the same conduit, but the L1/L2/neutral are 6AWG and the ground is 12 AWG. Is that sufficient? What gauge do I use for the ground wire to the rod?
 
That's unfortunate. I have no idea how long this conduit run is, probably somewhere around 100-200 feet. I don't think I can pull an 8 through it. Is it true if the main conduit is EMT the entire length I don't need a separate ground wire?
 
You must use a green insulated ground conductor for pool electrical wiring. Using conduit as the ground in this case is not an option. In general the use of conduit as the sole ground conductor is not the best of choices.
 
OK, maybe I should start over to get some opinions on how to fix this mess.
It's not a new install, the pool has been installed and wired this way since 1978.

I have 6AWG L1/L2/Neutral and 12AWG ground in EMT that runs from the main panel, under my backyard, all the way to the rear fence along my property and comes up into this sub panel.

This is how the sub panel was installed (with neutral and ground bonded together):

5IjGzX4.jpg


PVJWe6F.jpg


I have removed everything and mounted the ET8. The only thing left are the 3 main wires and a capped off 12 AWG insulated green. It's possible the pool lights grounds were wire nutted to the green wire but I thought it has always been capped off--it may not have been but it definitely wasn't being used as the main <> sub panel ground.
 
It's not so bad. The panel is pretty clean. You should check and see if they ran the green ground back to your main electrical panel. They might have only run the 2 hots and the neutral out to that point.

If there is no ground coming from the house then driving a ground rod out by the panel would be the easiest solution. You should remove the neutral to ground bond and that metal tab in the neutral bar screwed to the box. That tab should now be used to connect your unbonded ground to the box.

Now your panel is wired the way it should be.

Back in the day when your pool was wired this panel would have been perfectly normal. Times have changed tho.

You should upgrade to GFCI breakers while you are in there.
 

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I took that sub panel out, along with all the wiring except I saved the pool lights, and installed my ET8 yesterday:
mtXEMtB.jpg

The green wire on the ground bus is a pool light ground. The bare wire goes to my ground rod but I'll change that to a green insulated since you raised the point of someone confusing it with a bonding wire.

The capped green wire is the 12 AWG that is in the conduit all the way to the main panel. I opened the panel and saw that the green wire and the neutral wire look like they're on the same bus (looking at this picture below, the neutral wire from the pool pad is the black sheathed copper wire that is screwed into the bus with all of the white and green wires--it's the 2nd from the bottom on the left side of those two buses; the green one from the pool pad is also on the same bus):
Fff13Ua.jpg


The bare wire grounds are all wound up in this bolt and then all the way down through the wall and connected to the ground rod next to my house.
l3uclWx.jpg


So do I bother connecting that 12AWG to the ET8 at all? Do I run an 8AWG copper wire all the way from the pad to the main panel? Or do I just ground the ET8 to the ground rod, connect the green wire to the ground bus, or leave the green wire capped (or rewire it to the main's ground)?
 
In your main panel neutral and ground should be bonded. That is the one and only place that should happen.


You could run a larger ground all the way back to the main panel but that is costly and difficult. It looks like you have a ground wire it's just undersized. The more practical solution is to do as you have done and install a ground rod.

Since you traced you capped wire back and know it's connected to the ground in the main panel I would connect it to the ground bus in the easy touch panel.

Nice work so far.
 
Thank you for all the advice, I appreciate it.

I do have a question on the wire to ground rod, though. You suggested 6 AWG with at least 8 AWG minimum, but the bus bar doesn't look like it will take much larger than 10 AWG. Is there a trick to terminating a much larger diameter wire in a small bus bar like the one on the ET8?
 
hahaha, true enough! I don't know what I'm looking at when I look inside that main panel. I had meant to mention it was 3 phase but no one said, "hey that looks weird" so I forgot :)

If I'm not mistaken, it looks like the L1/L2 go into the panel like I would expect and the third leg is directly tied into the A/C breaker.

In any case, back to the equipment pad...do I need to GFCI protect the air blower or can I directly power it from a normal breaker?
 
The pictures you posted do not show a 3 phase panel. In 3 phase there would be 3 hot wires feeding the main breaker on the panel. Yours only has 2.

From what your pictures show you have a standard split phase residential power supply.
 
Thanks Jim! I dug through an old email from November that you sent me with pictures of your Easytouch and answered some questions back then...but I just got to installing it all this weekend. Almost done...

CJadamec said:
The pictures you posted do not show a 3 phase panel. In 3 phase there would be 3 hot wires feeding the main breaker on the panel. Yours only has 2.

From what your pictures show you have a standard split phase residential power supply.
Click to expand...
Yes, it looks like a 2 phase panel at a quick glance but I do have a 3 phase power supply from the pole and a 3 phase commercial A/C. If you look carefully at the photo I posted of the main box, there's a third wire that runs vertically down to the A/C breaker (it's parallel to/behind the red wire--not the wire running alongside it).

From talking with the local electricians that have come out (and the home inspector from when I bought the place a few months ago) they used 3 phase for these older homes out in the desert to run these big A/Cs. I've read that utility companies might split the A/C off from the rest of the panel to meter it separately but I don't know how accurate that is and my utility company doesn't do TOU or any kind of special metering for anything anyway.

Doesn't seem to have any bearing on my pool questions but thought I'd mention it just in case.
 

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