How to Install a Ground Fault Circuit Breaker for a Koi Pond

LESLIE: Moses is working on a water feature, complete with fish. How can we help?

MOSES: Well, I’m – I built a koi fish pond in my backyard and that’s about a 2,300-gallon fish – koi fish pond. Got fish introduced and everything. The only thing is I have an extension cord going from my kitchen, through my back door, to my koi fish pond and I need to put plug outlets at the pond.

TOM: OK.

MOSES: And had a question about running it from my breaker box, so that it was an independent breaker.

TOM: OK, completely separate circuit, yep.

MOSES: Just had a question as to how to get that done.

TOM: Well, if you’re asking the question on how to wire your new electrical circuit, my advice is to hire an electrician because it’s not something that you should be doing. I will tell you, in general terms, that the type of circuit that you want to install is something called a ground-fault circuit. It is a special circuit that has a breaker in it that will trigger – it will turn off if someone is unfortunate enough to be receiving a shock.

Now, a traditional circuit breaker is designed to prevent the wire from overheating. A ground-fault breaker is designed to not only prevent the wire from overheating but also to prevent you from overheating if you get an electrical shock. So installing a circuit is not a complicated project; it’s a fairly straightforward job and a relatively simple job for an electrician but not one that I would want to be your very first electrical project.

MOSES: OK. And as far as putting the ground-fault, could that be done with an actual AC plug in line by …?

TOM: Yeah, there are two places you can do it: you can do it at the breaker or you can do it at the actual receptacle itself.

MOSES: OK.

TOM: But if you do it at the breaker, it covers the entire circuit and that’s probably – if you’re starting from scratch, that’s where I would do it.

MOSES: OK. Great.

TOM: I would make the entire circuit ground-fault protected. This way, if you decide to tie in another outlet later, it’s all covered.

LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Mm-hmm. Run an exterior lighting for the garden.

MOSES: OK. Great. Hey, thank you guys very much.

TOM: You’re welcome, Moses. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.