On 09/07/2014 12:02 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 07 Sep 2014 11:40:55 -0500, philo wrote:

On 09/07/2014 08:37 AM, John G wrote:


snip.


*I suggest that you do have an electrician come out to have a look at the grounding electrode system. This consists of a water pipe ground, ground rods, bonding of all interior metal pipes, a bond to the main neutral in the electrical panel, and bonding of the telephone and cable TV terminals.

Having a good ground is a simple way to protect your house from lightning. Some enhancements to a good ground for extra lightning protection would be a surge protector at the main panel and lightning rods on the roof.

The neighbor probably got the pinhole leaks because those pipes were not properly bonded to the grounding electrode system. The difference in potential caused the arc to burn through the pipes. This has been a problem with flexible jacketed gas piping. It doesn't take much of an arc to burn a hole and cause a gas leak.

John Grabowski
http://www.MrElectrician.TV




Good advice.

I recently had my service upgraded by a licensed electrician and he put
in *two* 8' ground rods.

He said the requirement now is a total of 16' of grounding.


With the old ground rod disconnected I found 600 ohms of resistance
between it and the new rods...that means the old ground was fairly poor!

Ground rods are pretty poor electrodes anyway. The best was the metal
water pipe, when the whole system was metal. Now with all the plastic
used, it sucks too.
The best electrode these days is the steel in the foundation of your
house, if it is available.




My vintage 1898 house has no steel foundation but in addition to the
ground rods, there is also a cold water ground.