On Thursday, February 6, 2014 4:14:36 PM UTC-5, Jon Danniken wrote:
On 02/06/2014 12:51 PM, wrote:

During a kitchen remodel in my mom's circa 1948 house (post WWII made

out of reinforced concrete!) with 2-wire electrical and metal

conduit, I mentioned to my brother and nephew that, since it was

exposed, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to ground the wiring

conduit to a cold water pipe, thereby grounding the entire conduit

run and at the very least making grounded outlets work properly.



They reacted in horror saying it could cause a fire or even worse. I

said that at least you'd know if you had a short circuit because the

breaker would trip and touching something metal wouldn't kill you.



Ok, who's right here?



The main caveat is that you have absolute certainty that the water pipe

is metal all the way to the water meter, and doesn't transition into

PVC. You also have to make a solid connection to the pipe that will not

be compromised due to corrosion if the pipe is steel.



If you can accomplish these two issues, it would technically work, but

I'm guessssing it's probably not going to be code compliant (should the

incoming pipe be replaced by PVC in the future, the ground would end up

being non functional).



Jon

That about sums it up. It would work, but it's not code compliant.
Nor should it be necessary because the conduit should be grounded
back at the panel.