Earth Grounding inspection and testing

[Greg W. Mathias, CCHI]

I was in a home the other day that had a new detached garage put on the property. I was told that the electrical was inspected and passed. In are area the home is always grounded to the water service and then jumped over the meter. In this case the ground was disconnected as well as the jumper. My Question is, how can I truly tell if the home is grounded. I know that receptacle testers will not tell you so how do you know???

[Greg W. Mathias, CCHI]

In my inspection I recommend further evaluation and repair by a licensed Electrician but wanted to know how we can check it for ourselves.

[Roy D. Cooke, Sr]

Suspect Ground is incorrect , Please have this checked By an electrician immediately .
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I recommend you do not get to involved .
I am a retired electrician and want to stay away from Difficulties , hope you do too.

[Robert Meier]

The water pipe, if 10' long in contact with the earth, is required to be used as grounding electrode. If it isn't connected, the system is still grounded because the grounding is actually accomplished by connecting the neutral (grounded conductor) to the equipment grounding conductor by the use of the main bonding jumper. This would take place in the service disconnect or panelboard that contains the service disconnect. If the main bonding jumper were present and properly connected you would find an extremely low resistance between the neutral conductor and the EGC.

The connection or disconnection of the grounding electrodes would have little or no affect on the resistance between the EGC and the neutral.

[Greg W. Mathias, CCHI]

Thanks guys, I thought the same thing as you Roy. Don't get involved. Just thought there might be some way of checking to see if they had installed a new grounding rod and that is why they dissconected the old one on the water pipe. There was no indication that this had been done. Some one told me if I used a pigtail light and inserted one side into the hot and the other into the nuetral and check the brightness of the bulb. Then try it again but with the one in the ground. If they were the same it was good but if it was less it is deficient. Seemed like a cheap and corny way to do this.

[Jim Port]

Greg, whoever told you to do that does not understand the purpose of the ground rod/water line ground. These have no part in the normal operation of a properly grounded circuit. Robert explains this in his post above.

Grounding electrodes are for high voltage events like lightning and power surges.

[Robert Meier]

Originally Posted by gmathias1

Thanks guys, I thought the same thing as you Roy. Don't get involved. Just thought there might be some way of checking to see if they had installed a new grounding rod and that is why they dissconected the old one on the water pipe. There was no indication that this had been done. Some one told me if I used a pigtail light and inserted one side into the hot and the other into the nuetral and check the brightness of the bulb. Then try it again but with the one in the ground. If they were the same it was good but if it was less it is deficient. Seemed like a cheap and corny way to do this.

I agree with you guys that the grounding system should be checked by an electrician. Given the sophistication of testing equipment I don't see where testing with a lamp is a good idea.