Paul Fastball, What Up? What Up? What Up? What Up?
Welcome to another episode of Let's Ask Paul. My name is Paul Abernatha,
your host, and we got a pretty good one for you today. Before
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Okay, all right, and again that is going to be I believe it's
seven thirty Central Standard time or I should Yeah, just Central time, which
is where we're at in Texas. So again, adjust accordingly. If you're
an East coast you're going to be an hour ahead, if you're in the
West coast, you're gonna be two hours behind. So again, just your
time accordingly. Okay, let's get into today's topic. I did have a
question. It's sent to me, and it was more of a kind of
a personal type of question. And this question was basically asking me, most
of you know I serve on Code Making Panel five and it's my favorite panel
to serve one. I do also serve on seventeen. Not as enamored with
that one as obviously him on co panel five, and I'm a principal on
five, I'm an alternate on seventeen, which makes sense. I don't care
to be a principle on co panel seventeen. I'm just saying, okay,
so let's kind of look at it here. So the question it was sent
to me, it says, Paul, what is the number one? If
I can't read this, what is the number one issue that you find or
grounding and bonding violations that you're asked about on a constant basis? Okay,
so what is the what is the number one grounding and bonding violation you get
asked about? And that's an important thing because obviously being on Code Panel five,
I do get a lot of grounding and bonding questions that are sent to
me. And again, I let's ask Paul that Paul Abernethy dot com portal.
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and you'll be able to find it. Right. We appreciate all you out
there listening. All right, so let me talk about the number one thing
that I see, or at least what I'm asked about. Let me put
it that way, and this is going to be what you hear me refer
to as an improper case to neutral connection case being the grounded enclosure and the
neutral being the grounded conductor that is serving as a neutral in most cases that
I see, not all cases, but most cases that I'm having to see
when it comes to images and what people share with me or what I see
on social media. So when it comes to that, it's probably going to
be two fifty twenty four A five and that is a load size grounding connection.
And here's what it says in the National Electrical Code. And I kind
of bring a little context to where I see this the most, or when
people do it, whether they're hosting pictures on social media, whether it's tradehounds
or Instagram or TikTok or whatnot. And people are very proud of their work,
and that's good. It's good to be proud of their work. But
don't post that picture, don't post that video unless you know that it's code
compliant. Otherwise you're going to have people pick it apart because it is what
it is. It's promoting improper installations, and we do not want other people
learning from that. You're going to learn worse from seeing an improper installation than
worrying more about how pretty it looks. If it's still wrong it's wrong.
So if you got your codebooks or you're listening to this in the car,
don't worry. I'm going to dictate it to you. Is two fifty twenty
four A five that is entitled loadside grounding connections. So here's what it says.
It says, a grounded conductor shall not be connected to normally non current
carrying metal parts of equipment to equipment grounding conductors, or to be connected two
ground on the loadside of the service disconnecting means, except as otherwise permitted in
this article, and we'll talk about where it's permitted just by historical reasons and
what was allowed in the past and things like that. But in general,
probably the biggest thing I see is that when people have a service disconnecting means,
and let's say now it's a one in two families, so it's outside
the dwelling in accordance with two thirty dot eighty five, and it can it
could be the service disconnect, or it might be just emergency disconnect only and
you still have a panel out there with the service disconnect in it, or
maybe your service disconnect is your emergency and your service disconnect. However, you're
complying with two thirty dot eighty five. And you've got three options out there,
meter disconnect, separate disconnect, or you could have a service and an
emergency disconnect all in one. So you've got three options here in the two
thirty eighty five, right, So pick your flavor whichever one you want.
But what's important about that is once you have the service equipment, and that
is where you're going to have your main bonding jumper, right, and that's
going to physically connect the equipment grounds that come in, the grounded conductor that
comes from the utility all together, and it's going to make that connection to
the case. And that's why you'll hear us talk about improper case to neutral.
That's okay. At the service, all of those come together, and
that's where you take your grounding electrode conductor from that common terminal bus down to
whatever your electrodes are, whether it's a UF ground or ground rods or whatever
you may have. Okay, And of course you'll all know all of your
electrodes and all or in two fifty dot fifty two, and of course to
fifty dot fifty requires you to tie them all together. If you have more
than one type of a grounding electrode system there, So anyway that's a that's
a different topic. So the loadside grounding connection is where somebody would run a
feeder downstream from the service equipment and use a panel that is perfectly capable of
being used as suitable for service equipment for use a service equipment, and it
still has a green main bonding jumper in it, and they don't take it
out, and so they land the equipment grounds from the various brand circuits that
might come out of that feeder panel, and they take it and they make
connection where the grounded conductor is a neutral and the equipment grounds are intimate with
each other because they don't isolate the neutral above the case so that it doesn't
come in contact with the case. And then you have the equipment grounds which
do come in contact with the case. Now, the reason that you want
that neutrals to be kind of isolated floating, not in contact with the metal
parts is because there's going to be current traveling at any given time on a
grounded neutral conductor, okay, and if you were to tie that to the
metal parts, then you're going to have circulating current. And also we can
lead to objectionable currents. It can also lead to if you lose a neutral,
now you've got path traveling on the metal parts. All those types of
things are going to be unsafe, right, unsafe situation. So we want
to make sure that at the end of the day, what we're doing with
that is we're not going to run the risk of that taking place because we're
not going to do an improper case to neutral downstream, right, and so
when we set it up properly, we're not going to run three conductors right
to a detached structure like a building. Okay, so it's also going to
go the same way if we're running to ranges or dryers. Right, then
when we do that, we have to make sure we run four conductors as
well, and we're also going to isolate the neutral and so it doesn't come
in contact with any of the metal parts. Makes sense, same concept,
It's just a difference in taking it to an outlet in this case where you
need an equipment ground and a neutral and two ungrounded conductors. It's no different
than going to the detached structure. Now, when we read the allowance here
in two fifty twenty four A five, and we read it and it also
said unless otherwise permitted in this article. The reason it makes that statement is
because there are some applications within the NEC that are legacy, and when we
say legacy meaning they have been allowed based on previous accepted code editions. And
one of those is to kind of think, okay, well, under two
fifty dot thirty two, you have an A which is going to require the
grounding electrode at that building or structure that is supplied by a feeder or brand
circuit. So again that's your detached garage, let's say, and you take
a circuit, Yes, you're going to have to establish a grounding electrode system
there. Now, there is an exception if you only take a brand circuit
out there and things like that, So that's an exception under two fifty dot
thirty two A. But we're talking about a panel that's being installed in a
detached garage, and you're gonna run four conductors out there, right equipment ground
a grounded neutral conductor and two un grounded conductors or two hots. Okay,
you're gonna want to isolate that neutral so it doesn't come in contact with the
metal. Case. Now, when you read two fifty dot thirty two A.
That's about the electrode at the building. But what we want to look
at is B, and that's for a grounded system, right, so you'll
see what it says and B. Here's what it says. It says an
equipment grounding conductor as described in two fifty one eighteen and the course, i'll
remind you two fifty one eighteen is the list of acceptable equipment grounding conductors.
So if you want to pause the podcast, you want to go look at
it. You'll see all the different front allowances to be an equipment grounding conductor.
So at first it's telling us that we have to provide an equipment ground
of conductor, and it says it shall be run with the supply conductors and
be connected to the building or structures, disconnecting means, and to the grounding
electrodes. Okay, so that's why you go to the detach structure. And
let's say it's a it's a two car garage, that's you're going to be
converted man cave or she shied in your backyard. You have a panel in
there, You've run four conductors to it. You isolate the neutral the equipment
ground connects to a bus that's connected to the case, and then you go
from that case connection and you're going to run it down and you're going to
be taking it down to the grounding electrode via a grounding electrode conductor, right,
And in doing that, you're not going to take that GEC and connect
it to the grounded neutral It's going to go to the equipment ground that ran
with that feeder. Okay, So that's what it's basically telling you, and
that's how it's going to make the connection to the grounding electrode that's at that
detached structure. It goes on to say, and again for those wondering where
we're reading it, this is two fifty thirty two B one. By the
way, it says, the equipment grounding conductor shall be used for grounding or
bonding of equipment structures or frames required to be grounded or bonded. It says
the equipment grounding conductor shall be sized in accordance with two fifty one twenty two.
Obviously based on the overcurrent device upstream that's supplying that feeder to the building
makes sense. It says any installed grounding conductor shall not be connected to the
equipment grounding conductor or to the grounding electrodes. It says it flat out not
to do that right now. There was a time when that was permitted.
That is when it says, unless otherwise permitted. Now you have to look
at the exception number one? Does it say? It says exception number one?
It says the installation made in compliance with previous additions of the code that
were permitted such connection, that permitted such connection. It says the ground conductor
run with the supply conductors to the bonding to the building or structure shall be
permitted to serve as the ground fault return path if all the following all the
following requirements continue to be met. And I won't go into the different requirements,
but basically, if you meet these requirements, it's basically saying, look,
you didn't run an equipment ground in the past. You basically run two
hots and a neutral, just like what you do at a service, although
that's a feeder not a service. But it was permitted at one point to
run three conductors to a detached structure, or you can't do it now,
but if it was under a previous cycle, and you'll have to do your
due diligence to see when that was allowed. I believed, don't hold me
to it. I believe the last time this was allowed was under the two
thousand and five edition of the NEC. But anyway, you need to go
look because I'm not a historian and I've moved beyond that. So I try
to forget old stuff because there's just no room in his head for all that
old stuff as I'm starting to teach new stuff and what's allowed today. But
it's easily you can go look it up and see when that application was overstated.
Now, if you meet all of these conditions, then it's an existing
building. It's allowed to stay. But that does not affect new installations.
Okay, new installations is not gonna work. You're gonna have to have four
conductors. So I think what I see the most is images and illustrations.
I shouldn't see illustrations, images and picking up pictures of people posting their work
and the main bonding jumpers in there, and it's clearly a remote distribution panel.
It's a feeder panel and it's being supplied by a feeder. And when
you look at it really closely, you will notice that the equipment grounds are
connected right, and they're connected to the the grounded conductor improperty through a main
bonding jumper, and that creates improper connection, an improper case to neutral connection,
and that's a problem, and you're not supposed to do that, and
that's a direct violation of two fifty twenty four A five And it creates circulating
currents, It creates potential live parts that are carrying current because we know the
neutral is going to carry current at all times. It carries the maximum imbalanced
load between the phases, so nothing is totally balanced, especially in a dwelling.
So at the end of the day, there will be current circulating on
that and we remember it only takes a tenth of an amp to kill you,
and we don't need to be energizing metal parts downstream, so at the
end of the day. That is probably the number one that I find or
that people show me pictures of or get asked about, is improper case to
neutrals in using the grounded conductor downstream to bond metal parts, which is not
to be done. It is okay to use it on the supply side of
the service disconnect, and we get those permissions in the code. And if
you want to know in the code where you get those permissions, by the
way, to do that on the supply side, use the grounded conductor to
bond wireways and whatever. On the apply side, then you need to take
your codebook and what you'll do is you're go looking into it and you'll see
where it gives you that permission to use the grounded conductor on the supply side.
Now, before I even talk about that, I want to make sure
that we're all on the same page that when we're talking about that, it's
called the supply side equipment and the use of the grounded conductor for bonding,
not the load side, the supply side, and that would be two fifty
dot one forty two. So if you want to go look at that,
there you go right. So now, if you want reassurance that you don't
make this connection on the load side, then you want to make sure that
you also look at two fifty one forty two B because that's going to remind
you again and it's going to give you some exceptions for things like ranges and
dryers that were permitted at one time, just like we talked about for the
feeder, at one time it was permitted right, and it's going to make
references to that, and that's you know, things that are covered in two
fifty one forty for the ranges and dryers and all that kind of good stuff.
But that's not something you can do today. That is something that's from
existing application, all right, And you'll also see, you know that what
you can do on the supply side, you can't do on the load side.
Now, if you want to see about ranges and dryers and the exception
for that, just go to two fifty one forty, pause the podcast,
go let's look at that and you'll get a better understanding. Now. As
I always say, if you have any questions about what I went over,
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right, so you know that's just another benefit you get. All right,
So anyway, hopefully I answered that question that to me is the number
one thing that I get asked or that I see in images, is in
proper case to neutral or connecting between the equipment ground and the grounded conductor on
the load side of a service disconnect except where it's kind of a legacy thing
that we looked at in two fifty thirty two B or in two fifty one
forty exception and things like that. So other than that, that is probably
the number one thing that I see out there. So here's the moral,
here's the executive summary of this. Anytime that you're going to run four conductors
to a range, or to a dryer or to a detached structure, okay,
Well, you know what, even if you put a panel in your
attached structure, if it's still a remote distribution panel, you still have to
separate the grounds and the neutrals, elevate the neutrals, the grounds, go
to a terminal that connects it to the case or the enclosure, and keep
it isolated. You only can bring them together at the service anything downstream,
no boy, no, okay, So again, go check out the code.
If you have any other questions on that, feel free to email me
or just go to our Paul Abernathy dot com and let us know. Let
you know what episode this is, and if you have a follow up question,
please feel free to reach out to us and I'll be more than happy
to try to help you. Until next time, folks, Stay safe,
God bless ask ask ask