Ground or Don't Overseas 220v service panels

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Mythumbs

Member
Location
Washington
Occupation
Electrician
Friends are cleaning up family homes fed by a non-grounded 220v city wide system. They are asking me should they ground their service panels?
 
What they are asking me is, If there is no bonding/grounding on the City grid and if there is no grounding/bonding in anyones house. Are they making anything safer by adding a ground rod to the house service panel. They will be adding wire nuts and junction boxes to branch circuits where those have been missing. I am not sure how to answer their question because I am not familiar with their 220v system. Has anyone here seen this in your travels ?
 
If the source isn't grounded or bonded, what would a ground rod be a path to? But then again, how do you know what another customer on the same transformer might have done? If customer A, grounds phase A, and customer B Grounds phase B, and customer C grounds phase C, you are going to have lots of unhappy worms
 
Last edited:
Joethemechanic said:
If the source isn't grounded or bonded, what would a ground rod be a path to? But then again, how do you know what another customer on the same transformer might have done? If customer A, grounds phase A, and customer B Grounds phase B, and customer C grounds phase C, you are going to have lots of unhappy worms
Click to expand...
Norway tried to go with a countrywide ungrounded system and they had a lot of those kinds of problems. Nobody knew where the first "fault" was.
 
Just a guess here, which you should take with a big grain of salt and consult the local authorities...

If the question is whether they should ground the metal parts of service panels and other non current carrying parts, etc, the answer is probably yes. This will possibly allow residual current devices to sense unintentionally grounded (ground faulted) conductors and open.

If the question is whether they should ground a current carrying conductor on an ungrounded system, the answer is certainly no. (That is, if the system is supposed to be ungrounded, rather than that it is grounded at the source but not grounded at the services due to negligence. )
 
jaggedben said:
If the question is whether they should ground the metal parts of service panels and other non current carrying parts, etc, the answer is probably yes. This will possibly allow residual current devices to sense unintentionally grounded (ground faulted) conductors and open.
Click to expand...

If no part of the system is grounded, grounding metallic non-current carrying parts is a useless endeavor.

-Hal
 
This is the ultimate in bad DIY questions. OP may or may not be an electrician, but is forwarding a question from a non-electrician in a foreign country with different system designs and different rules.
 
winnie said:
This is the ultimate in bad DIY questions. OP may or may not be an electrician, but is forwarding a question from a non-electrician in a foreign country with different system designs and different rules.
Click to expand...
For such a DIY question to persist without getting closed is unusual, but equally informative with how well the members addressed the topic.
 
This forum's owner should add additional categories. There is "Canadian Electrical Forum". So maybe "European Electrica Forum" then "California Electrical Forum".
 
hbiss said:
If no part of the system is grounded, grounding metallic non-current carrying parts is a useless endeavor.

-Hal
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. It may allow detectors to indicate the first fault.

In any case, we're also not assuming that no part of the system is grounded.
 
mtnelect said:
This forum's owner should add additional categories. There is "Canadian Electrical Forum". So maybe "European Electrica Forum" then "California Electrical Forum".
Click to expand...
I really liked it better in the old days when all posts were in a common forum.
 
jaggedben said:
Not necessarily. It may allow detectors to indicate the first fault.

In any case, we're also not assuming that no part of the system is grounded
Click to expand...

We can only go by what the OP has provided us with and shouldn't make assumptions without further information.
The best advice to give the OP is to tell his friends to contact a local electrician who should (hopefully) be able to help.

What's worse than giving DIY advice is giving advice to someone who is advising someone else.

-Hal
 
I would like to thank you all for your comments and I would agree, we know too few facts about their actual situation. I think we should end it here. Thank you again.



A little background for why I asked the question: Some years back I was invited to join in on a nonprofit trip overseas to clean up some electrical wiring in an airplane hangar. The expats as well as the nationals that worked for this nonprofit group were the highlight of this trip. People working hard in often difficult and hot locations.

Currently, on a different continent they are helping their families straighten/clean up their residential electrical systems. It started as a simple question from nonelectrical folks asking if adding a ground rod to each home would be a good idea. My admiration for their dedication and work ethic made me want to find them the best answer.

If anyone wants to go learn more firsthand let me know. They would love the help!
 
Mythumbs: A grounding rod is to reduce the likelihood of damage due to lightning. Bonding is to provide a fault path and trip the breaker when a hot wire energizes a metal enclosure. PLENTY of literature on the subject that makes sense if you keep the differences in mind. This link may help sort out just what is in the nation your friends are in:

en.wikipedia.org

Mains electricity by country - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
TwoBlocked said:
Mythumbs: A grounding rod is to reduce the likelihood of damage due to lightning. ...
Click to expand...

Not for the first time, I will dispute that. Mainly because it may leave the false impression that the more ground rods you add, the more insurance against lighting damage, whereas when done improperly that could be the opposite of the truth. Also there are other functions of grounding electrodes and so it's just not that simple.
 
In my opinion. The only place that you need two ground rods is around Florida. I have never lived there, but people I have talked to from Florida say it's a real experience, including the alligators.
 
I worked in Africa for a few years with MSF. Grounding and bonding varied by country and was site specific. Grounding and bonding was usually one of the biggest issues and the most confusing to national electricians.

In Free Town there was somewhat reliable city power supplied by a Turkish power ship moored in the harbor. It was an ungrounded system. The electrician before me attempted to ground the system and it caused problems. The ground was lifted before I arrived on site.

I cant give any insights to grounding the system you are describing without visiting the site. What I can say is that RCCBs do save lives and should be in the main panel and all sub panels. RCCBs are either 30mA or 300mA. Make sure you get the 30s. Whenever we rented a new guest house the first thing we would do is install RCCBs. They would trip and we would track down the shorts in the house. We used RCCBs downstream of the main breaker, they were sized to protect the entire panel. Its a bit different then GFCIs.

MSF and the ICRC put together a book on electrical safety in 3rd world countries. Its a great reference manual. a few key take aways:

-RCCBs protecting all circuits
-no outlets in bathrooms
-bathroom light switches in the hallway not in the bathroom
-two pole breakers on all circuits- hot and neutral

What organization did you volunteer with?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top