Basement treadmill trips GFCI, what next?

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southernmaine

Member
Oct 19, 2021
8
York County, ME USA
We have a used treadmill in our basement that trips the GFCI outlet usually after 30-90s of operation. The treadmill is plugged in via heavy duty (appropriate gauge) ext cord which is not ideal but unfinished basement outlet locations aren’t ideal either.

One of the basement sub panels has a non-GFCI outlet attached, I’ve used that temporarily to verify the treadmill works and isn’t throwing smoke/sparks or acting strange.

What are my options to wire up an outlet near the treadmill? I want to remove the extension cord from the situation, but (from my early investigation) all basement outlets need to be GFCI, so I expect my nice new perfectly-placed outlet will continue to trip.

Sounds like motors don’t always play well with GFCI, I’ve read static discharge may be involved as well with the rolling belt.

Any thoughts or suggestions or similar experience? Thanks in advance.
 
Long extension cords can also trip a GFCI.
Can you move the treadmill to near the GFCI to test what happens when the extension cord is not involved?
 
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Start by replacing the gfi outlet if you want gfi protection. Is your basement a wet location? Does code require a GFI outlet in that location?

It’s been my experience that motors going bad often trip GFIs.
 
EbS-P said:
Start by replacing the gfi outlet if you want gfi protection. Is your basement a wet location? Does code require a GFI outlet in that location?

It’s been my experience that motors going bad often trip GFIs.
Click to expand...

Code in the USA requires all basement outlets to be GFCI.
 
I had a similar problem with a gray water lift pump in our basement tripping a GFCI outlet. I installed a GFCI breaker for the circuit in our breaker box and have had no further issues.
 
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As EbS-P already said, some GFCI's are sensitive to motor circuits running VFD's, or anything that puts a lot of harmonic or spur noise onto the line. Pool installers constantly deal with this problem, as pool pumps now require GFCI protection, and until very recently all of the variable speed pumps ran VFD's that would constantly trip GFCI breakers.

There are GFCI breakers that are specifically designed to be less susceptible to this, with Siemens being the most common among them. C-H and Sq.D are the worst, in this regard. I do not know of any GFCI outlet that is not susceptible to this problem.

Here's how I would proceed, if this were mine, and assuming you've already verified it's not tripping non-GFCI breakers:

1. If you already have a Siemens panel, ditch the GFCI outlet, and replace with a standard outlet on a GFCI breaker.
2. If you don't have a Siemens panel, then try replacing GFCI outlet with a new GFCI outlet, as some of the older ones seem to trip more easily.
3. If neither of the above works, then I'd install a small Siemens lugs type load center ($50) next to your main panel, slap a GFCI breaker ($60) into that, and route the circuit through it. Bonus: more room for expansion is often in order, anyway.

Can't promise the Siemens breaker will fix the issue, if there's some unknown fault. But the Siemens breakers have been shown to be much less prone to tripping with VFD or other motor loads.
 
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