John Ross wrote:

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?

Never used it.

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.

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.

That is standard in service panels.

--
bud--