[bcsjbaylor]

I have a quick question and am hoping for an easy answer...

I have just remodeled our kitchen and in doing so wanted to have two circuits at the countertop. I ran a 12/3 wire into the first box, tied the reds together and ran the black and neutral through the GFCI. At the second box, I tied the blacks together and ran the red and neutral through the GFCI, now thinking that both circuits are protected. The rest of the outlets are red circuit on top, black circuit on bottom.

Unfortunately, now what happens is that the red circuit trips whenever anything is plugged into it. The black circuit is OK. If I shut the black circuit down, the red circuit is OK. I am thinking I should not have shared the neutral but as the kitchen is done except for the wiring, I am now stuck.

I think I have two options:

1) eliminate one of the coutertop circuits and use only a single circuit.
2) remove both GFCI outlets and replace with two GFCI breakers (I don't know for sure if this would work though since all the outlets will still share the same neutral.

Any help anyone can give me would be most appreciated. Thanks.

[tkrussell]

GFI devices cannot share a neutral, so the best you can do is use a GFI outlet from the shared neutral at the beginning of each circuit so there is two wire from the load of each GFI outlet. The shared neutral can be spliced on the line side of each GFI.