What Up? What Up? Everybody? Welcome to another episode of Let's Ask
Paul. This is the podcast where I answer all of your electrical code related
questions that are submitted through the portal over at Paul abernathy dot com. Free
service doesn't cost you a dime. All you have to do is go to
Paul Abernathy dot com, put in your name, email address, and put
in your question and you could be selected for an upcoming podcast much like today's.
But at the least if you put your email address in there, I
will look at your question and give you a response back, because I want
to make sure that we respond back. And if I ever forget you and
you do submit something, just remind me because I get tons of these.
In fact, there are hundreds of them now sitting in the queue still waiting
for me to answer, and I get to them as quick as I can.
So I usually do, you know, ten or fifteen a week trying
to keep caught up, and of course when the weekends come around, I
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All right. So the question today that was submitted to me that I
thought was an interesting question was asking basically an opinion, and I you know,
I am very opinionated, but most of you know that. But the
question was asking me what do I think is the And I can't remember I'm
paraphrasing it because I don't remember whether I deleted the email or not, but
I wanted to make sure that I did respond to it. Because I didn't.
I don't know what happened, and anyway, it's lost. But so
I'm not going to give an email response to it. But I figured that's
the reason why I want to select it, to do a podcast for it,
and basically to're asking me, in my years experience, where do I
feel that the majority of electricians out there get wrong the most? Now I
don't know if it's trying to select what code section I think they violate the
most, because that's just that's a tough one. But what I find regularly
in been doing this for over thirty eight years is that it tends to be
a misunderstanding of the principles of grounding and bonding, whether it's generators, and
not understanding how a GFCI works on a generator if it's not connected back to
the source, and how it's not going to function, and how a GFCI
functions. And they think it's the holy grail of protecting you and it's not.
But you know, it's a good start. But that's probably the number
one thing is through the years, I think that the people's understanding of grounding
and bonding principles. They think they know them better than they really do.
And so this is why you know, people ask when I'm doing webinars and
training, why do I gravitate more towards grounding and bonding topics? Well,
you know the normal stuff in the code. Just looking up stuff in the
code, it's pretty fairly. You know, it can get proficient at it
calculations once you you know, that's kind of a visual thing. Once you
get used to it, you see how something is, then it becomes easier.
You're like, okay, I get it. When it comes to grounding
and bonding, we still run into the issue where people can't seem to wrap
their head around the principles of grounding and bonding. Even though we could boil
it down to the simpleness of creating a low impedance effective ground fault current path
back to the source. We could break it down into making sure that you
bond all metal parts together so everything's at the same potential. We could try
to boil it down to all those basic concepts, but then it still gets
lost when the electrician goes to the installation process. So you know whether it's
dealing with and I just recently did a couple of videos. If you're interested
in them, they're over on fast tracks Tube. That's our video platform,
not on it's not on YouTube, it's only on our subscription platform, fast
tracks Tube. It's the best ninety nine bucks you'll ever spend, I promise
you, And that's where all of our exclusive episodes are at, and it's
constantly expanding. So I think it's a great deal. Ninety nine bucks a
year, unlimited access to all the videos, and we have some webinars on
there that are worth that price alone. In fact, they cost people three
times that to attend the webinars. So you know, I think it's a
great value personally. But anyway, you know, you find out that you
know, in the last couple of years, it's kind of social media has
created a big awareness of issues that people are that they just don't understand grounding
and bonding, and so they post stuff and you read it, and when
you're somebody like me that that actually you know, serves on the code making
panel, And I tell you right now, I've been so blessed to be
on Code Panel five. Some of the people that are on that code panel
are just amazing Paul Dombrowski is just amazing. Christine Porter, it's just amazing,
Phil Simmons, different people like Joe Andre, different people like that that
you know that sit on a committee that you know you can just chime in
with them. Everybody's learning environment. It's a very unique code panel. I'm
on other code panels, but five is by far my favorite because of the
intellectual minds that sit on that panel. So I think of Code Panel five,
and again it's not just because I'm on it, but prior to being
on it, it was one of the panels that I'll always looked up to
and I'm like, you know what, just looking at the pedigree that sits
on that is always where I wanted to be. And so I've been blessed
to be on there for a couple of cycles since twenty seventeen cycle, and
you know, and we're developing the twenty twenty six right now. And these
are just some great people. Now they're not without making mistakes, because they
are making a mistake when it comes to the equipment, ground and conductor and
you're running in parallel. But notwithstanding that, and that was not done by
a bunch of collective that was done by one group of individuals who are really
not understanding the concepts of paralleling equipment grounds and why we have to have them
full size in each race way. They're not understanding that. But anyway,
at the end of the day, great panel, great people, and I
get to sit in on it. But one thing that I found recently,
when I say recently in the last couple of years, is that electricians really
don't understand grounding. And but even when you do something wrong right, so
even if you have an improper case to neutral other than the fact that now
that we have afci's they can detect that. But but prior to that,
we propagated this issue where people didn't do things right and they violated the rules
and two fifty twenty four A five or now it's two fifty dot twenty four
B that they they violated these rules. But yet it's still worked, and
everything seemed okay until it's not okay. And so people ask me, I
mean, the code changes every three years, and we get tons of submissions
on code panel five, and I look at it and I go, you
know what, the reason this keeps evolving is because we actually learned what we
didn't know and we bring other people who have other areas of expertise to the
code panels, like Eric Stromberg. He Eric Stromberg is great when dealing with
the high resistance grounding and all this type of other stuff because he worked at
Los Alamos and he brings a great knowledge to this committee based on those things
that a lot of us don't really work with. The concepts are simple,
but he brings that knowledge that together makes for a great panel. So that's
an example of when you you you mix the right sauce and you bring the
right group of people together. And that's to me what Copenal five is all
about. Now. One of the things that, like I said, going
on social media and one of my missions on social media, and I don't
answer a lot of questions on social media. I understand that social media is
a necessary evil for a company and marketing and business and and everything. But
what I what does dishearten me a lot is when I see posts by people
or comments by people that say it in a way that's so matter of act,
yet they're so wrong, but they actually passionately believe what they say even
though they're wrong, and you can try to correct them, but it becomes
a pissing match, and I'm not into that. You either want to learn
or you don't want to learn it. If you don't want to learn,
I'll just move on. But when you read it and you see it,
you start to realize that collectively, one of the biggest things that people don't
understand is the concepts of grounding and bonding, even the simplest thing when you
try to break it down to like supply side bonding and then load side bonding.
Right, whether you're sizing the supply side bonding jumpers and two fifty one
zero two C one or you're doing a load side equipment bonding jumpers and two
fifty one zero two D, they don't get it right. They don't understand
the concepts and what happens if you need to service, you know, do
a little more for service bonding and you're looking at two fifty ninety two fifty
ninety two A and B and realize that that is different than what you would
do on the load side. But they make it, you know, way
more complicated than it needs to be. So I tend to put out videos
and there's some of those over on fast Tracks Tube that try to break that
down and if I find little areas, I mean, I don't want to
teach the entire grounding and bonding all article two fifty. I mean, we
have a course for that. If you're interested in that course, it's one
of the best out there. I'm biased, of course, but in the
twenty twenty edition, I helped write this book, and I did not help
for the twenty twenty three but they didn't really add, you know, change
anything. They just put what changed in the code from twenty twenty to twenty
twenty three. And I wasn't asked by Engage or phil to help with that
book, but they did work with a gentleman named Mark Odi. And Mark
Odi is an amazing guy, amazing educator, and so I have no doubt
that the twenty twenty three edition is amazing, and we have the course based
on the twenty twenty three edition. So I encourage it for everybody that wants
to get a deep understanding of the NEEC. And it's not that you have
to, right, I mean, it's you've already got your license, so
you're thinking, shit, I'm not going to spend any money on a course.
I've already got my license, And that's kind of a sad thing because
I am constantly doing courses. I am constantly continually learning things, taking classes.
I do continuing education from my electrical licenses, never with my own content.
I use other people's content so I can learn from their content. It's
a perpetual learning process. And so it saddens me that people, I mean,
obviously I'm selling courses, don't get me wrong, but it saddens me
that you put out material to teach people and they don't want to go that
extra mile to learn something. We're on this rock a short amount of time.
I like to learn as much as I can, and it always broads
my knowledge. So if you're interested in our Grounding and Bonding course, it's
a great course. It's available over on our website fasttracksystem dot com, and
you're in. It's unlimited, means you'r don as it doesn't expire, and
there's a lot of quizes in it, and you get a better understanding of
grounding and bonding and it logically walks you through article two fifty by the way,
so it's not going to be random here there. It's very logical flow
and so great illustrations. That's the one thing I'll tell you that is really
great call outs and illustrations and discussions, a lot of discussions that kind of
get in the mind of the educator. So that's available over on our website
if you're interested in a good grounding and binding, and it never expires,
so you can buy it now and it'll serve you for years. But that's
probably the number one thing that I see is social media is opened up the
umbrella of ignorance. And that sounds nasty, but it allows us to see
what people really know and versus what they really don't know in it. And
you know, there's a lot of people that don't comment, and my problem
is I don't want people that So people ask me why do I filter comments?
Isn't it open for opinions? And not really? Not really, I
be honest with you. I serve on co panel five. I've been doing
granting a bonding for years. I've written books on it, written articles on
it. I'm not I don't know everything in two point fifty I know how
to read it and interpret it. But where I do share information, I
don't need opinions. I know that sounds bad, like, oh, you
think you're a know it all that's just going to lead to the people that
hate me. Go, Paul, that's right, Paul. Thanks, he's
a know it all. No, I just can't let the social media from
my accounts turn into a pissing contest over your opinion. Which you can have
your opinion. You're entitled to your opinion, but if you're factually wrong,
I'm not going to let you taint it by arguing something that's just not correct.
And you say, well, who says you're correct? Well, my
thirty eight years in serving on a panel that's dedicated to grounding and bonding,
writing a book with it on grounding and bonding, and answering questions for many
many years decades now on grounding and bonding, I think I'm gonna go with
my opinion. Okay, Now, if you have a question and a comment
that's very constructive, yeah, I allow those, and I do my best
to try to answer those. But if you want to get into a chest
pounding match or whatever, then I'm just not going to let that. And
that's on any of my platforms, by the way, any platform that I
do, I'm just not gonna let that happen. Just not worth it.
So so yeah, so grounding and bonding is if I have to give you
any advice, if you're a young person out there and you're studying your free
exams and you already or you already have your license, and you're thinking what
area can I study? And I get this question a lot people say,
Hey, Paul, I've got my license, but I want to grow my
knowledge because you find yourself asking questions on things, and if you ever sit
down and you think about something you don't know the answer in your head,
that means probably other people don't either, and that means there's probably other things
you don't know. And so the reason we put the courses out there for
grounding and bonding is to give you this area to go and to have these
discussions. And in all of our programs we also have an area where you
can have comments at the end, so you have something you don't understand in
the unit, you can do a comment and we'll answer it in the comments.
That's a beautiful thing about our courses that they allow for those comments for
you to be able to interact as you're going through the program. I think
that again, looking at grounding and bonding issues, that if I had somebody
young that said, what can I do to get more proficient or get better?
And I would say get grounding and bonding. Really, study grounding and
bonding really, because article two fifty is probably one of the toughest articles out
there to wrap your head around. And I tell you it's not as simple
as this. Bond all metal together, supply a low impedances effective ground fall
current path, put everything at the same potential that's on a surfaces. That
sounds easy, right, Meeting all the objectives of two fifty dot four.
Okay, I get it. But at the end of the day, you
have performance requirements and you have prescriptive requirements. The performance requirements and two fifty
dot four is that if you do everything that you're supposed to do in article
two fifty, then you're going to have a safe installation. And then it
proceeds to give you the prescriptive requirements all through two fifty, Well do this,
do that, do this, do that, size this, size that.
Those are all prescriptive in order to try to achieve a performance, which
is obviously to make it safe. Right. So I think at the end
of the day, when people do things like just as simple as sizing equipment,
ground and conductors. Believe it or not, they're still confusing and I
get these emails. There's still confusion. When you look at two fifty one
twenty two, you have an A, A, B, A, C,
A, D, E, and F and you have the table that
people still get confused. Hell, I can tell you right now, even
Code Panel five, certain individuals that submitted a committee input to change equipment ground
sizing, did not do the research. They're just doing it off of a
whim. And again that doesn't go against me saying the intellect of the Code
Panel five is amazing because they are sometimes even people that are experts, are
so confident that they think you should just believe them at face value without bringing
the reci without bringing the goods, And this is an example of that.
Not to take anything away from those individuals on that task group that did that,
I'm just saying, you didn't bring the receipts, you didn't bring the
goods. And I called that out during the meeting and they did not address
my question, which actually goes against the NFPA policy. So I don't know,
And somebody called that out in the public comment stage, and it was
only one person that voted against it. The reason I didn't vote against it
was because I represent the Aluminum Association and we have this ruling. If it's
not one hundred percent unanimous, then you abstain. So ultimately we just said,
you know what, we'll just agree to it, even though I presented
the reason why it was bad, because they know that we're going to send
something. We're going to submit something. It's what's called a public comment stage,
and that's going to give the goods right, we're going to bring the
receipts then and try to get it corrected. Then it would be no good
trying to shoot it down in the public input vote because we knew that there
wasn't as much argument during the meeting, so the chances are it was still
going to get consensus and going to go to a public comment stage anyway.
And that was fine because we wanted many other people to be able to chime
in on it, and so now all of you can chime in on it.
So if you want to you want to support me in that, and
I hate to go on this little tangent, but if you want to support
me on that and make sure the code does not get less less safe,
then make sure you go to read our blog. I have a blog that's
out there over on the blogs on fastracksystem dot com. You'll see the tag
blog kind of scroll through it, you'll see it. It talks about the
paralleling of an equipment ground and conductor and there's two articles on there. Make
sure you read them. Do me a favor, read it and share it.
And I would love for you to submit a public comment on that change
and that that change is in two point fifty f and I encourage you to
get involved because again, we don't have any data out there that would justify
us reducing the size of an equipment ground. Remember it's got to clear an
overcurrent device. So I think we're making a massive mistake without any data to
support it. Okay, so that's my soapbox if you want to get involved
in that flood the code panel with public comments on that saying that they're making
a mistake when it comes to two fifty one twenty two f and I believe
it's f two by the way. So anyway, that's my soapbox for that.
But that doesn't take anything away from the code Panel. That's just individuals
who are very knowledgeable and they believe that they're right, but they don't bring
the goods. They don't bring the receipts, and that's a problem. I
always try to bring the receipts, you know. I don't want to just
spout off something about code where I cannot articulate it or I cannot bring justification
for it's just me right. And that's why I always have a mission when
we created the CMECP program is to train electricians master electricians to always bring the
receipts. You're a code expert at that point, so you bring the goods.
Uh. And if you're going to give an opinion on something and make
sure you back it up with code. Don't just say something that you believe
because you heard somebody else say it. Now you got to bring the goods,
right. And so that's the whole purpose of you know, being able
to be a code expert, or whether you don't want to consider yourself a
code expert, I get it. Some people say that's obnoxious. My opinion
of a code expert or an anyc expert is somebody that not just quotes the
entire code, but knows how to research it, go through it and provide
a very detailed response. You don't have to know everything in that NEC,
but you need to know how to research it, find the answer, and
then formulate your opinion. And that to me is what a code an ANYC
code expert is not just somebody that just regurgitates it from their brain. Right
now, obviously we remember a lot of things because we've been doing this for
a number of years, but I still go to the codebook to verify,
read it, make sure I'm reading it, make sure it all comprehends.
To me, getting number one problem with people learning the NEC is reading comprehension
reading it, and if you have to read something multiple times, then you've
got reading comprehension issues. I'm just saying. Or it could be written so
ambiguous that you have to stop, slow down and think about it. Because
code is written like that. It'll have one sentence and then the next sentence
is a totally different thing, and then the third sentence all within the like
a paragraph, and they all mean different things, and so it's it's not
broken up real well. So hey, I'm the first to tell you the
NEC is a confusing document, but it to me, it's less confusing than
the ICC documents, and it's much less confusing than ASTMs or UL documents.
I'm just saying. But at the end of the day, I give you
example, UL documents talk about grounding conductor and they're really wanting to talk about
equipment ground and conductor, but they talk about grounding conductor. And so when
you work in the UL standards and you know they're talking about an equipment ground
but we don't use the term grounding conductor. In the NEC. We steer
away from it. We have specific terms. But then you go to the
UL standard and they go ground and conductor. Why don't they call it equipment
ground and conductor. You see what I'm saying. So a lot of times
somebody like me who works in the UL standards, a STMs, works in
the ANTI standards, ends up working in the NEC. Back and forth.
You got to really focus because the crap can go all over the place with
terminologies. Right, So again UL and the UL committees. I serve on
various UL committees. You know, we should make an effort to mirror the
minimum safety standard of the NEEC, that type of thing. So AnyWho,
Yeah, I hope that answers your question. Grounding and bonding. That's why
we put out the course, yes, because we feel it's important to have
people educated. That's why we do the videos over in Fast Tracks Tube.
We feel like grounding and bonding is where you think you're comfortable with grounding and
bonding, you're really not and there's something extra to learn that type of thing,
you know, understanding of the electrodes, Understanding how they interconnect, Understanding
the difference between a supplementary or supplemental electrode versus an auxiliary electrode. Understanding the
sizing requirements supply side bonding jumpers, load side equipment bonding jumpers, equipment grounding
jumpers, equipment bonding conductors, equipment grounding conductors, just so much that you
have to wrap your head around, and the sizing rules can be slightly different.
Right, So yeah, Understanding the tables fifty sixty six, understanding two
fifty one zero two c one standing two fifty one twenty two, how they
interrelate in a circuit, all those type of things, how they can work
together when you're trying to accomplish something in grounding and bonding. For example,
an equipment grounding conductor serves a bonding role, right, but we don't call
an equipment bonding conductor, even though people have been trying to change that for
the years. We don't need to change that because it is an equipment grounding
conductor because it serves a stabilization, it extends the connection to Earth, but
it also does bonding, and so that's in the informational note, which is
part of the definition. So we don't really need to make this overly complicated,
and it's all there, but it can get confusing. I'm not gonna
lie, and so that's why we came out with the course. So if
you want our course, go to our website. If you want to watch
some of the videos on grounding and bonding, go over to fast tracks Tube.
We'd love to have you. But hopefully that answers that question, folks.
All right, all right, that's it for this podcast. Hopefully you
got something out of it. Grounding and bondings seems to be the toughest area
that even today after thirty eight years, when I look at social media or
I have conversations with people, whether it's again supply side bonding, sizing,
jumpers, all of that still seems to confuse people even to this day.
Right, So at the end of the day, get our grounding and bonding.
Course. It's going to help you. I promise you. It's going
to be one that never expires. You keep it in your pocket. It's
web friendly so you can use it on your phone. It's just a great
resource, all right, folks. That's it. Just wanted to make sure
that we covered it and answered that topic because I did delete it, and
I just want the gentleman out there who submitted it to know that I did
not forget you. I did cover the topic for you. Till next time,
folks, Stay safe, God bless and be safe out there. Nothing
a thing mask, nothing