Grounding a circuit

Any one ever see this?

It appears they are grounding these circuits. The wire is bonded to the metal plumbing which is bonded to the main panel ground.

Is this acceptable? If so should the connections be in a junction box?

Thank you

Not being in a box makes it wrong.

Grounds do not need to be in a box. However, that does not mean this is being done correctly. There are are certain conditions that need to be met.

All wiring connection should be in boxes.

What is “conithat”?

That is very far away from acceptable.

All connections do not need to be in boxes. There is no need for boxes on grounding connections.

That was supposed to be conditions.

This is not acceptable:

  1. All conductors in the circuit should be contained within the same raceway (conduit/pipe) or cable assembly. Running grounds like this is not acceptable.
  2. The grounding conductors should terminate within the service panel. They have no business being connected to random piping at random places, since this does not guarantee continuity.

This is not the worst I’ve ever seen, but pretty bad nonetheless.

No need to quote specific parts of NEC – just discover-describe-defer and move on.
A sparky will never fault you for pointing out this travesty.

Grounding conductors are specifically allowed to be run separately and not parts of the wiring for the branch circuits.

Grounding conductors also do not need to terminate in the panel of the circuit origination. There are other acceptable places that connections can be made.

Jim, could you please provide code references for both of those statements?
250.146(D) does not seem to apply to the first one, so what does?

I didn’t feel comfortable with this one so I did “discover-describe-defer and move on”! :smiley:

Thanks all
Have a great day!

Mike try 250.130©.

The only thing that may not be compliant is if the EGC is connected to the water pipe at a point that is more than 5 feet away from where it enters the building. Any point on the water pipe past this length is not considered part of the grounding system.

Jeff

Right…
Lest we forget all hanging splices – those wirenuts hanging mid-air, plus the goodness-knows-what that the electrical tape is hiding.
All signs of work done by the proverbial “unqualified person”.
Hack, hack hack;
Good call on writing it up.

Under the 1990 NEC {250-50(b)Exception} and in earlier code cycles a bonding jumper was permitted to be run from the grounding terminal of the receptacle to any water pipe that was bonded in accordance with 250-80(a).

I thought the GEC had to be continuous, with no splices. Except with compression-type connectors, or connected at busbar.

It does but you can install bonding jumper taps using something like this split-bolt which keeps the GEC unbroken.

I believe we are looking at EGCs being run to ground old wiring or receptacles. The wiring is too small to be a GEC.

Gotcha, just took a quick glance. The water pipe grounding/bonding threw me off