Just when you think you know something...

Help!!!I am very familiar with installing electrical circuits but this one has me stumped. earlier this year I bought a house that was built in 1977. It has a complete bathroom in the garage. The house had all ungrounded outlets in it. I wanted grounded outlets in the garage, bathroom and outside so I put in a sub panel in the garage. I have been using GFCI outlets exclusively in the garage and outside. I wanted an outlet and a vent fan/light in the bathroom. I thought that a GFCI breaker would be easier to use than a regular breaker and GFCI outlet. I installed the GFCI breaker according to the instructions. I installed the white wire on the load neutral bus like it said. The grounding buss and the load neutral buss are separate. When I energized the circuit everything was fine until I put a load on it. The load was a 75 watt light bulb. Even a "wiggy" type volt meter tripped it, just the GFCI part. My Fluke didn't trip it because it has a smaller load factor. The instructions said that this must be totally separated circuit, which it was. I finally pulled out the GFCI breaker and put in a regular breaker and made the first outlet a GFCI outlet and ran the rest of the circuit through it. I only had two lights and a vent fan on the circuit. After replacing the GFCI beaker with a regular one everything worked like I wanted it to, even ran the shop vaccuum to clean with. I'm wondering if the GFCI breaker would not work because it was in subpanel or was I just not reading the instructions right. I am always learning something from you folks. I always say the day is no good if I haven't learned something. Thanks, Rick

kjto165
Your problem is in netural or ground circuit.Ihad two neturals in conduwit hooked one too device one to next device would kick breaker with load.Took me to find it.
traper

You must take the neutral for that circuit and install it on the GFCI breaker. There is a place for it. Installing the white wire from the breaker to the neutral buss is just one of the steps.

When you installed your sub-panel did you drive in a good 8 foot groung rod? GFI breakers require a good ground to work. Never ground them to the building frame or the copper water pipe. Doing that could result in serious injury or cost you more money.