bud-- wrote:
John Ross wrote:

bud-- wrote:
John Ross wrote:

I spoke with the electrician today and he said he would use #8 wire
(he said that was for 100 amp panel). Not sure what you meant by "very
restrictive" in using that, I doubt he would do anything different.

2005 NEC 250.64-B "Securing and protection against physical damage"
"Grounding electrode conductors smaller than 6AWG [#8} shall be in rigid
metal conduit, intermediate metal conduit, rigid nonmetallic conduit,
electrical metalic tubing, or cable armor."
All of them are a form of pipe (some are light weight pipe) except cable
armor which is a spiral metal protection like BX. If the conductor is
run through ferrous tubing/pipe there are additional requirements that
directly or indirectly bond both ends of the pipe to the grounding
conductor. If you use one of the required protection methods #6 should
be cheaper.
It will need protection where it is located. The cable armor sounds
the easiest (to bend), does that contain ferrous?
snip

If the electrode connection to the water pipe is not withing 5 ft of the
entrance it is safe as a grounding electrode as long as the metal water
pipe is intact. Your call whether you move the connection.

If it HAS to be moved, did you or someone say it has to be one
contiuous wire all the way back to panel? I'm not sure how he could do
that without wall damage. Can it be clamped to the point where it
currently is at pipe and then jumpered to within 5 feet of entrance?

I hope this doesn't open up a new can of worms, but I remembered that
the way they did these houses, they didn't have a ground bar in the
panel--the grounds are connected to the neutral bar. I asked him about
that and he said he would just connect the new ground connections to
the neutral bar also and "that was legal." Do you see a problem with
that?

At the service panel only (not downstream subpanels) the neutral and
ground are connected. The neutral bar is usually insulated from the
enclosure, but they should [almost] always be connected together at the
service panel. The connection is often by a screw that goes through the
neutral bar and screws into the enclosure behind - not at all obvious.

The neutral-ground connection at the service is part of providing a low
resistance metal path for short circuit currents to trip breakers. The
path is ground wire to neutral-ground bond to service neutral to
transformer.

This panel (there is only one at house) has NO ground bar--grounds and
neutrals are on the "neutral" bar. So he is proposing just adding
these new ground connections there as well. Is that OK? If they are
bonded together anyway, I can't see how it could hurt, but as you know
this is all new to me.

--
John