Electric System Grounded?!

Thanks to our recent inspection from Steve Cymbalsky, we learned that our electrical system was in no way properly grounded. We had one single corroded cold-water ground on the service main only, instead of 2 (water and earth groundings) for each of the four lines (meters for 3 apartments + common space) — information that neither Con-Ed nor our original inspector at purchase ever pointed out. Since then, electrician Vilmore Beckford has done a beautiful (& reasonably priced) job bring our 4 lines up to code. Nice to feel safer, and well taken care of by good people in the building trades.

fms44

in General Discussion 2 years and 2 months ago

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justinromeu26 | 2 years and 2 months ago

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Notice i only mentioned what i have been told and what i see electricians doing and really won’t speculate as to why. I really don’t know. Even with op, i knew his grounding was old and did not look professional so all i said on the report was “have an electrician look at this”. I suppose an extra wire never hurts but these are questions for a licensed person.

I do have an 8k generator out back here and it is older and i know i need a ground rod on that. When that is running i do not let anyone in the back yard.

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 2 years and 2 months ago

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So, do you think I should do anything in my single family house with just a cold water pipe ground?

justinromeu26 | 2 years and 2 months ago

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you know, these folks are going to think i am posting shill reviews on here. but thank you.

since you brought it up, i will explain more about this and what i have been told the code expects of grounding systems, in the modern sense and what i see the licensed electricians doing as they modernize systems in these old houses here in NYC.

The old grounds where a simple “cold water ground” where a grounding wire was run from the box to the water main on the street side of the meter (street side because the meter is not seen as a good conductor). the modern code in the greater part of the country is doing away with the cold water ground (because more plastic is coming into play) and now they are specifying two grounding rods with a wire from the box to each rod.

what i have found on some inspections with older electrical systems and multiple meters and service panels (multi family) is that they not only have the single cold water ground but they have a single wire running from one main panel to another and to another and then to the cold water ground (i suppose it wo uld be called “in series”, break the grounding to one and you break it to all further up the line). this is not what they want. they seem to want (going by what i have seen electricians do) is a wire from each panel to a “grounding” bus and then from there they want (in this city) a cold water ground and a rod. I have not seen two rods in the city yet. just one and the cold water ground. She the photo. the photo is from an inspection i did a few days ago.

Grounding is super important when something goes wrong. Those of us who work around a lot of tools and damaged cords and especially those us who worked around older tools with metal housings (stuff made say in 60’s that was still around in the 80’s) know how important grounding is (first hand). when i moved into my own house, the first thing i did was improve the grounding (mainly because we have a child).

[Inkedground bus](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:Nfcx:inkedgroundbus.jpg.jpg)

Steve
brownstone home inspection LLC