On Sep 28, 9:02 am, John Ross wrote:
I never would have imagined trying to ground a receptacle would turn
into such an ordeal! And, like I said, not one of these electricians
know what I am talking about when I qquote the NEC codes you guys
mention. Scary...Had I not asked in here, I would have gone with that
one guy who had the isolated ground rod that made no sense now that it
was explained to me here.
Minimum that was required was an earth ground rod near breaker box
and connected direct to breaker box. Your description implies no
proper earthing existed. A ground rod connected as close as possible
to the breaker box is the only upgrade required and serves other
useful purposes beyond what is addressed by code. Other utilities
(cable and telephone) should connect to that same ground so that those
utilities provide minimally sufficient electronics protection (as
hallerb suggests elsewhere). That suggested to meet current code even
though other marginal earthing is not required to be upgraded.
I no longer rememeber if this recommendation was posted. Other
simplest corrections to consider for human safety were summarized by
volts500 in alt.home.repair entitled "Grounding Rod Info" on 12 July
2003 at
http://tinyurl.com/hkjq
Those recommendations are so simple, so easy, so inexpensive, and so
improve human safety issues as to also be performed - to upgrade basic
safety grounding closer to what current code requires.
The only thing you do not have (according to your description) and
that you must correct is earthing of AC electric. Those additions to
safety grounding inside the house (from volts500) and the tying of all
incoming utilities to a common ground are required by current code;
not necessary for you to upgrade; but should be performed anyway
because those little improvements provide significant human safety
improvements for so little effort.
What size should a ground wire be? That varies based on things
such as the amperage of electric service as summarized by gfretwell.
Standard used in most all homes is 6 AWG. Ground wire is usually
larger than what is required by code. 6 AWG copper is an industry
default standard for residential electric.