I same issue occasionally with 5-15 I ended up having a 20 amp breaker in the panel so I ended up upgrading it to a high quality 5-20 GFCI and now I get 6 miles an hour

 

If anyone does this, make sure the wiring between the breaker and outlet is 12 gauge to prevent the wiring from overheating. Occasionally someone puts in a 20 amp breaker because a 15 was tripping, or they only had a 20 handy, but the wiring can't really handle it. The "it always worked before" logic doesn't apply, because at 110 volts the Mobile Connector really pushes your wiring to its limits.

 

This outlet it turns out is the only GFCI in the Gargae. Is it safe to try and use the non-GFCI outlets in the Garage for charging? From what I have read the UMC-2 has a built in GFCI so I want to make sure it is not dangerous to plug it into these other outlets.

You should be fine.

The UMC has ground fault protection built into it, which covers the length from the UMC to the car. From the wall to the UMC (i.e. the pigtail) there won't be protection, but unless the area around the outlet is wet and/or you plan on unplugging the UMC from the wall while the car is charging (please don't! ) it shouldn't make a difference.

Separately, if the circuit you'll be using is connected to a 15A breaker, and there may be other loads on that circuit while charging, the breaker may trip if the car is set to charge at 12A. In that case, set the car to charge at 8A instead.

 

thank you so much for the response. I forgot to add that after Monday I lowered it from 12amps to 10amps. It worked for 1 day and then the GFCI tripped again yesterday as I mentioned.

Can I keep it at 10amps or reduce it even lower on the new outlet (non-GFCI) to 8amps as you mentioned? I believe the Garage has its own dedicated breaker according to the fuse box, but I haven't tested this to verify (flipping breaker etc.)

thank you again,

David

 

Not that it's necessarily to retroactively bring all your garage outlets up to code. Current code is that all garage outlets SHOULD be GCFI, regardless of what you're plugging into it.

If it were me, I'd get all the garage outlets on GFCI, so cheap, so easy, so safe. And replace the problem GFCI at the Outlet or at the Panel. There are other threads about some GFCI's that are fickle with Tesla Charging and will false trip.

If you do have the option of a 20 Amp 120V in the garage (it has the T shaped blade on one side, 15 amp has just 2 straight blades), use that 20 Amp and get the 20 Amp adapter. I see you are in Boston. I would seriously consider getting a Level 2 charge (240V) for more available watts of heating during "Polar Vortex" waves. You could spend many hours just heating and no miles added when the battery is sub 0F on a 15A circuit. It's normally so cheap to get to, say 30 Amp 240V (99% of the time it's a few hundred bucks). Garages are often not far from the main panel.

 

One other thing to consider is that the GFCI outlet also provides protection to everything else in garage that may be plugged into different non-GFCI outlets, but on the same circuit, for instance a chest freezer, the sprinkler system controller, or something else. We also found in our house that the garage GFCI outlet tripped due to a short circuit in the underground cable that powered the lamp post on our front lawn. We ended up having to relay the wiring to the lamp post to fix that problem. You'll still have the circuit breaker to provide protection, but no longer the GFCI for the added protection intended (and required by building code?) in a high moisture environment if you remove it and replace it with a non-GFCI outlet.

 

True. Don't assume it's a ground fault that is tripping, when it could be load that is varying elsewhere. Ideally you want an exclusive circuit regardless of the Amp.

 

GFI's generally aren't really designed to trip for too high amp usage, that's the circuit breaker's job. There are some GFI's that also come with arc fault and over-amp protection as well, but those are kind of expensive, and fairly new - so I doubt you have one of those.

GFI's also tend to become more sensitive as they age. Older ones can trip even if the appliance plug shakes a little bit while it's plugged in. An outlet with heightened sensitivity like that will likely trip every time the Mobile Connector checks the ground for continuity. If that happens, it's time to replace the outlet.

There is also a possibility the GFI is wired incorrectly, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Whether you're replacing the GFI or replacing it with a non-GFI outlet, this is the best procedure to follow, in my experience:

First, turn off the circuit breaker (of course). Then pull the GFI out of the wall, and see how many wires are hooked up to it. Generally, two wires come from the circuit, labeled "LINE", and two labeled "LOAD" go to other outlets in the circuit protected by that GFI. If you only have "LINE" hooked up, you can freely replace the outlet with a non-GFI. That's not to code, but you can kind of get away with it as long as the outlet is above about waist-high, and nothing standing on the floor is plugged into it (a garage GFI is supposed to protect against the possibility of an appliance standing in a flood being plugged in, or the outlet being immersed in water).

If you have four wires hooked up to the GFI, start with some safety testing. Remove the "LOAD" wires and cap them, and then turn the circuit breaker back on. Test the outlet with a light and see if it's active. If it is, your GFI is wired safely. If not, turn off the breaker and swap the "LOAD" and "LINE", because someone wired it backwards. You can now safely replace the GFI outlet (after turning off the breaker!) with another GFI, but more steps are needed to replace with a non-GFI.

Replacing a GFI with a non-GFI if you have 4 wires hooked up: Turn off the breaker again and find out where the two "LOAD" wires are attached to. Since they're disconnected from the step above, you may as well find the now-dead outlets. Usually if a garage outlet has more outlets hooked up, they're going to be outdoor outlets, or less commonly, bathroom outlets. It might take some trial and error to figure out which outlet is next in line behind the garage GFI, but if you can find it, replace that outlet with a GFI (or if you can't figure it out, you can optionally replace them ALL with GFI's), but once again make sure "LINE" and "LOAD" are correct. Then you can replace the garage outlet with a non-GFI without losing the protection in the rest of the circuit.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. I got all of this information by having to do exactly this myself a short time ago!

 

Unless you already know exactly what should be done. Hire someone.

And in my opinion do not remove GFCI’s to band-aid anything. Really bad advice saying you can get away with it.

 

thank you all for the great feedback!

My main point was to test/use in the interim the other outlets (safely) in my garage to see if they worked, basically trying to see if the cause is the 1 GFCI outlet. All of my outlets in my garage are above standard 18"AFF - they are above waist height (didn't measure). So far so good last night with charging at 10amps - getting 4miles charged per hour.

Next I am going to look to replace the existing outlets with GFCI as some mentioned, but use a better brand. As I believe the prior owner put in cheap ones when he updated/renovated the garage.

I definitely want a 240V NEMA 14-50 outlet installed, but I have a feeling the cost will be hefty. As my garage is detached and all existing wiring going to the Gargae is run through conduit underground. I will get quotes but imagine a large price tag even if we can reuse existing conduit with the 6 gauge wire.

Looking to find some electricians in my area next.

Best and Happy Friday!

David

 

I definitely want a 240V NEMA 14-50 outlet installed, but I have a feeling the cost will be hefty. As my garage is detached and all existing wiring going to the Gargae is run through conduit underground. I will get quotes but imagine a large price tag even if we can reuse existing conduit with the 6 gauge wire.

If the electrician can isolate the circuit going to the garage, he might be able to convert the entire feed to 220 volts. Then the underground conduit can possibly be reused.