Goedjn wrote:
On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:06:02 GMT, "peter" wrote:

An intermediate solution is to pull a separate ground
wire, and run it back to your service panel.
If you do that, you want to make sure that no ground
wire serves the devices on more than on circut, and
that each one is big enough to handle the circut it's
on.
So to serve more than one circuit, you need to pull more than one ground
wire? Wouldn't it work just as well to pull a thicker ground wire?

Probably. Esp. if you use 10 AWG wire. I mean, how likely
are you the get three simultaneous high-resistance shorts
from the same leg of your panel?

But I know that the the former works, is safe,
and is legal, and I don't know any of that for sure about
the latter.


Equipment Grounding Conductors (EGCs) are sized for the size of the
largest Over Current Protective Device supplying the conductors in a
given box or other enclosure. As an extreme example lets use a junction
box for the kitchen and laundry circuits in an apartment. If the box
contains a fifty ampere stove circuit, a thirty ampere dryer circuit, a
twenty ampere laundry circuit, a twenty ampere multiwire kitchen counter
top circuits, a fifteen ampere multi wire dishwasher and disposal
circuit, and a fifteen ampere multiwire refrigerator and microwave oven
circuit it still only needs one equipment grounding conductor. That EGC
is sized for the fifty ampere breaker for the stove. The only reason
that the US NEC would require you to increase the size of the EGC is if
you increased the size of the current carrying conductors to compensate
for voltage drop. It just is not likely that there will be simultaneous
faults on two or more of the circuits that EGC was installed to protect.
--
Tom Horne

Well we aren't no thin blue heroes and yet we aren't no blackguards to.
We're just working men and woman most remarkable like you.