[camp73]

I recently bought a house & I'm renovating the kitchen.

I have 2 duplex receptacles within 1.5m of the sink. I need to make both of these outlets GFCI protected but they are both 3 wire kitchen splits. GFCI outlets do not exist for 3 wire split circuits.

I have a 25 year old Commander BC 32125 panel and I can't get 2 pole 15amp GFCI breakers for this panel to replace the standard 2 pole breakers on these two circuits.

Could I put a single pole 20 amp breaker in the panel and run the two 14 gauge hot wires in parallel to a new GFCI 20amp t-slot outlet (for each outlet)? 2-14 gauge wires should be better than a single 12 gauge to handle the 20 amp circuit right?

But then there is the whole electrical code thing...

I may be faced with replacing the panel or trying to pull new 12 gauge wire (which is virtually impossible)

Thanks to any and all who reply!

[stanfortyman]

25 years is not that old. Are you sure it is not made? Did you try a real electrical supply house?

You could also install a small sub-panel and move that circuit to the sub-panels and use a 2p GFI breaker in that.

[brekkster]

I'm not sure what the split is for
But if the split is just to have 2 circuits at each kitchen receptacle what you could do is locate where the circuit starts and where it ends "making sure its not feeding anything else in the house" if it is just the kitchen receptacles use only 1 of the feeds on the line side and the load side and cap off the unused feed and load wires

[stanfortyman]

Split receptacles in kitchens used to be a Canadian code thing.

[ohb0b]

"Split" circuit? I think you are referring to a "multiwire" brasnch circuit. The reason you can't find a two-pole GFCI breaker is there is no such thing for this application.

GFCI's work by comparing the current in the hot and neutral wires, and tripping if there is any imbalance. On a multiwire branch circuit, the neutral wire carries the current imbalance.

The good news is the GFCI compares the current on the hot and neutral wires going TO THE RECEPTACLE. So, if you pigtail the GFCI's into the circuit instead of landing the wires directly on the terminals, they will see a balanced current in both wires.

Landing the two 14 AWG wires on the same breaker would make them both the same phase, but the wire is not really parallel, (one would go to half the receptacles, the other would go to the other half) so you will not have any more cross sectional area. As a side note, the NEC does not allow paralleling wires under 1/0.

[stanfortyman]

Two -pole GFI breakers ARE available for situations just like this, but maybe not that fit the OP's panel.

[hkstroud]

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