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Home Improvement Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [grounding-and-bonding]

For questions dealing with grounding and bonding of electrical installations, and the specific requirements of such.

Definitions:

Bonded (Bonding). Connected to establish electrical continuity and conductivity.

Grounded (Grounding). Connected (connecting) to ground or to a conductive body that extends the ground connection.

Topics Covered:

Topics covered by this tag can include, but are not limited to:

  • Systems, circuits, and equipment required, permitted, or not permitted to be grounded.
  • Circuit conductors to be grounded on grounding systems.
  • Location of grounding connections.
  • Types and sizes of grounding and bonding conductors and electrodes.
  • Methods of grounding and bonding.
  • Conditions under which guards, isolation, or insulation may be substituted for grounding.

Code Sections:

  • NFPA 70™ National Electrical Code® Article 250
306 questions
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Is it OK to borrow a ground wire from a different circuit?

I've got a circuit in the basement carrying a handful of outlets. This circuit has no ground wire. I want to add a couple of outlets and want them to be grounded. I may even want gfci outlets on them in the future. I have no reasonable way of…
Paul
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Is it OK to create a third prong ground from a cold water pipe, for a 2-wire circuit?

When or is it NEC code compliant to upgrade a 2-wire circuit, by adding a third prong equipment ground from a nearby cold water pipe? A different case of borrowing a ground from a nearby circuit is covered at: Is it OK to borrow a ground wire from a…
Bryce
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Is this box bonded properly to the ground?

The receptacle is from the mid-1950's and my multimeter shows that it is grounded. There are a solid 120 volts when testing between live and ground. I noticed a bare copper wire coming from the cloth wiring in the back tied to a screw connected to…
the_martian
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Can ground attached to neutral fool a receptacle tester?

I'm using a basic outlet tester like the one from picture below. Let's say someone wired the ground to the neutral in some outlet, to provide a fake ground. What would the tester report? Would it be "CORRECT" or would it be something else? In case…
fernacolo
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2 answers

Is grounding an outlet only to its box enough?

There's an outlet in the front hall of my house near Atlanta, GA. I noticed scorch marks on the face, so I decided to investigate it a bit. My outlet tester indicated an open ground. When I opened up the outlet, I was surprised by what I saw. The…
Kurt Tomlinson
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12
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3 answers

Can I use a hose clamp to ground a wire to EMT?

Question: What are the rules for how to attach a wire to an already grounded EMT conduit? Can I use stainless steel host clamp and tighten down? Background: I was installing a metal box for a light switch in our attic and had to terminate existing …
KJ7LNW
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2 answers

Does NEC allow a metal box to carry the ground connection between separate conductors?

I found this box: You can see that most of the conductors have their grounds crimped together in the deep part of the box. A box extension was added to this at some point, so it is rather deep, but then I noticed that one of the conductors has a…
Ryan Mortensen
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How do I check if my outlet's ground and neutral are connected correctly?

When we moved to a new house I noticed a strangely wired up outlet: For this outlet, I am really suspicious whether the grounding is messed up and mixed up with the Neutral. Normally Neutral and the Live wires are the thicker ones right? If that is…
NerdyNerdie
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2 answers

I have 11V between neutral and ground, how can I isolate the problem and solve it?

I am in Indonesia and the local electricity company is bad and there is no actual electrician around. People just connect wires together. So with this in mind I recently ripped out my wires (unearthed) and put in new earthed ones: I have a digital…
thelawnet
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2 answers

Is an explicit ground wire required through steel conduit?

We just bought a Chicago-area house and found that there's no ground wire in some of the recently re-wired areas. I thought that the national electrical code requires a ground wire for new construction and remodels, as opposed to relying on the…
glenviewjeff
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Why is it required in some countries to sleeve uninsulated earth wire in junction boxes, but not required and not practiced in other countries?

I don't know if the better question should be "why does, for example UK, require earth wires to be covered in a yellow sleeve in junction boxes", or should it be, "why does, for example USA, NOT require it and why don't electricians do it as a best…
jay613
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3 answers

Are the grounds and neutrals in this electrical subpanel reversed?

I would appreciate your feed back to help me understand the logic behind Bonding the Neutral and Isolating Ground as shown in the attached pics. Subject sub panel is dedicated to one of four residential units / FourPlex. each unit is about 500 Sq…
H1991
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4 answers

How do you ground residential network equipment?

I needed to run some Cat5e UTP network cables and decided to add network outlets to most rooms, run new phone wiring and RG6 as well. Much of what I've seen and read about residential and small office installations doesn't mention grounding much but…
OrganicLawnDIY
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Why am I not seeing continuity between MC cable sheathing and ground wires?

Using a multimeter, I checked the continuity of the aluminum sheathing against any of the conductor wires (black/white/green) and there is no continuity to any of them And then, when I wired the 3 conductors to a plug and plugged it in an outlet…
akosiempre
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Do the EGC and GEC both terminate at grounding bar in new sub-panel in detached building (garage)?

Edit: My rough location: Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA There are a million questions and youtube videos on the topic, and I'm sure one of them clearly answers this question because it seems so absolutely basic, but I'm struggling to find a really…
shoelessone
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