DIYbanter - View Single Post

Wayne Whitney

On 2008-08-01, wrote:

It has a convenient screw spot in the neutral bar for bonding, so I
will ask the inspector when he comes if I need to bond the neutral.
I also bought the extra ground bar.

You do not bond the neutral, since you are providing an equipment
grounding conductor in your feeder. The neutral and EGC should be
kept separate like a regular subpanel.

So on the ground rod-- he said I probably didn't need a ground rod,
that it is debatable,

A ground rod is required, there's no debate. :-) See gfretwell's post
for the NEC citation.

I pointed out to him that if the ground rod is there and is causing
RF problems or tripping my GFCIs that all I have to do is disconnect
it.

Ground rods don't cause RF problems and don't cause GFCIs to trip.
Whenever a GFCI trips, it is due to a sufficiently large (5 ma)
current imbalance in its current sensing transformer. Almost always
this is due to a problem with the equipment plugged in. Very rarely
the imbalance is a phantom caused by RF interference from something
like a hand-held walkie-talkie. In that case a better GFCI should be
found that is more resilient to electrical noise.

Oh, also, about the loads I'm going to have on this: I have one
circuit that will be running some occasional woodworking tools, like
bandsaw, chop saw, drill press, etc. Occasionally I might run a
router on it, but I can do that up at the garage if it trips
breakers. It would be rare, at any rate. I have another circuit
that will run some lights-- two flourescent lights over my work
bench, a small ceiling fan with light and one light outside over the
door. The final circuit only has two recepticles-- one for a small,
window air conditioner and maybe a dorm fridge on the other.

Seems like if your air conditioner and fridge come on at the same
time, and you are running your table saw, you may exceed 30 amps and
trip your 120V feeder breaker. You should check the nameplate ratings
for those items and add them up.

Cheers, Wayne