All grounds tied together in a box.

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sw_ross

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Sometimes if I have a 3 or 4-gang plastic nail-on switch box that has a bunch of NM cables, when I'm making up the box rather than using a big blue wire-nut for my grounds I’ll separate the grounds into 2 groups and use red/tan wirenuts instead, especially if there’s 2 circuits in the box.
I can fold them into the back of the box easier and it makes the box much cleaner.

A co-worker question why I didn’t tie them all together and said it’s required by code. He couldn’t give me a code reference.
My thought is that as long as all devices installed in the box had a ground path back to the source to facilitate the tripping of a breaker that’s what’s required.
I’m not sure what tying all the grounds together in a box accomplishes that my 2 groups of grounds wouldn’t accomplish?

Thoughts?
 
Tulsa Electrician said:
Did you run one between the two groups. If so your good.
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That's how I do it, all grounds in same box connected together, but not under same wirenut or crimp sleeve if too many for wirenut or crimp sleeve, just a single conductor matching size of largest conductor in box between the two groups.
 
Frank DuVal said:
That's how I do it, all grounds in same box connected together, but not under same wirenut or crimp sleeve if too many for wirenut or crimp sleeve, just a single conductor matching size of largest conductor in box between the two groups.
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Arguably for the jumper between the two groups, it suffices to look at the largest wire size in each group, and then use the smaller of those two sizes.

Cheers, Wayne
 
I'm not a huge fan of loop wiring, but when using 4 gang boxes with multiple cables, you can leave one long tail for the EGC and loop every yoke. If you have more than one circuit in the box, tying all the grounds together is not necessary as long as you separate the EGC's of each individual circuit and make sure they are all tied together.
 
Rick 0920 said:
If you have more than one circuit in the box, tying all the grounds together is not necessary as long as you separate the EGC's of each individual circuit and make sure they are all tied together.
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It may not be necessary, but there is no good reason not to.
 
wwhitney said:
It certainly is for any circuit terminated or spliced with the box; see 250.148 as per post #4.

Cheers, Wayne
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Wayne, what I read in 250.148 was that the conductors needed to be "connected together". If I had (2) 15A circuits in a 4 gang box, the EGC's of the (2) home runs would connect under a "terminal bar" (250.8 #2) They would still be "connected together" via the means of a terminal bar. I guarantee that if you put an ohmmeter between the two bundles, you would agree that they are connected together.
 
Rick 0920 said:
If I had (2) 15A circuits in a 4 gang box, the EGC's of the (2) home runs would connect under a "terminal bar" (250.8 #2) They would still be "connected together" via the means of a terminal bar. I guarantee that if you put an ohmmeter between the two bundles, you would agree that they are connected together.
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That's perfectly fine; but I would say that description doesn't match what you mentioned in #7, about "tying all the grounds together is not necessary". The above does involve tying all the grounds together, via that terminal bar.

Sounds like we agree on the fundamentals but are using the terminology differently.

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
That's perfectly fine; but I would say that description doesn't match what you mentioned in #7, about "tying all the grounds together is not necessary". The above does involve tying all the grounds together, via that terminal bar.

Sounds like we agree on the fundamentals but are using the terminology differently.

Cheers, Wayne
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I should've clarified that ultimately they would still be required to be connected together. Good catch! Cheers!
 
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