Grounding your Electrical System, a Seattle Home Inspector’s, 3 Part Series: Part II

     If your eyes haven’t completely glazed over and I can awaken you for a moment I would like to discuss the second means of achieving Grounding of your home’s electrical system. The new Washington State, Standards of Practice, require Seattle Home Inspectors (all Washington State Home Inspectors) to report: “The existence of a connected service-grounding conductor and service-grounding electrode when same can be determined.”

     I would hope that most home inspectors would have already been doing this, but having it spelled out specifically in the Standards of Practice is an improvement over most Home Inspection, Standards of practice around the country.

     All Electrical Services to homes have to be properly Grounded.  There are three common ways of achieving this grounding requirement.  Some homes will have one or two of these methods and it is possible for a home to have all three.  The first method of achieving grounding is the Main Water Pipe to the home.

     In this post, Part II of this series, we will discuss the “Ground Rod” the second type of Grounding Electrode Conductor.

     At some point in time (mid 60’s) it became apparent that the water pipe to the house could no longer be relied upon as the only means of achieving grounding of the electrical system.  Not only because of the soil conditions discussed in Part I, but because we started using plastic water pipes to supply water to homes (and little Joey was metaphorically getting more creative).  Plastic is a lousy grounding conductor----in fact it doesn’t work at all.  So the Electrical Gods gave us “Ground Rods.”   These rods are usually either galvanized steel or copper coated steel.  At first, just one rod was used but it did not take long for two rods to be required.  The reason for this is that the diameter of ground rods has much less surface area than the water pipe that runs to the home, they are nowhere near as long, and therefore did not provide a really “positive” connection to the ground---especially in particularly poor soils---like gravel.

     Because of the importance of achieving really good grounding, a third method of grounding had to come into play. 

     In Part III of this series Herbert Ufer will visit my blog and help us understand the “Ufer Ground,” the third type Grounding Electrode Conductor.

Charles Buell

Seattle Home Inspectors, ASHI Home Inspector, Structural Pest Inspector, Charles Buell Inspections Inc, Seattle, WA

Click on the Rose to check out:  AHA!---A Forum of Landmark Proportions---your Group

PS, for those of you that are new to my blog (or for some other "unexplained" reason have never noticed)all pictures and smiley-face inserts (emoticons) (when I use them) have messages that show up when you point at them with your cursor.

DeCroe, is my "ethereal" home inspector assistant and occasionally flies into my blog and other people's blogs to offer assistance. To find out more about her beginnings just click on Raven.