Having Grounding Problems

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Michael15956

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NE Ohio
Have a job at a residence with a 100amps supply. A disconnect is positioned directly behind the meter inside a garage. From the disco there is a three wire run to the breaker panel in the basement. This three wire feeder is in an 1&1/4" steel thread-less pipe with compression fittings. No grounding rod(s) just a cold water pipe that was connected to the neutral lug in the breaker panel. Also the continuity of the feeder pipe is bad. Pipe is buried under a long run of cement and it appears there is a break somewhere. I have so far installed a new breaker panel in the basement and have treated it as a sub-panel. Problem is I can not feed an EGC in the said conduit, just will not feed through to the first disco. Second problem is the water pipe bonding to the disco. I will have to go up into the attic of this residence to get it to the disco.

Do I have any other options?
TIA
Michael
 
Can you replace the current 3 wire feeder with a 4 wire feeder in a new raceway or a run of SER? If not, I think your only option is to get the GEC from the water pipe to the disco and supplement that with two ground rods which by the way is still needed even if you can run a new feeder.
 
mivey said:
Why do you have to go through the attic as opposed to drilling through the wall?
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I was thinking you were talking about from the ground rod.

I agree with A/A that you would abandon the old raceway. What would you do if the neutral or one of the line conductors were broken and the conduit unusable? Same solution as you have a broken conductor now.
 
A/A Fuel GTX said:
Can you replace the current 3 wire feeder with a 4 wire feeder in a new raceway or a run of SER? If not, I think your only option is to get the GEC from the water pipe to the disco and supplement that with two ground rods which by the way is still needed even if you can run a new feeder.
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Cannot replace the 3 wire feeder. They will not move. Their conditions is good. It's the thread-less conduit that has high resistance. It is looking like I will have to run a separate EGC to the disco.
 
Michael15956 said:
Cannot replace the 3 wire feeder. They will not move. Their conditions is good. It's the thread-less conduit that has high resistance. It is looking like I will have to run a separate EGC to the disco.
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How do you know they are good and not under stress? The "break somewhere" would be a concern. Did you megger the conductors?
 
Michael15956 said:
Cannot replace the 3 wire feeder. They will not move. Their conditions is good. It's the thread-less conduit that has high resistance. It is looking like I will have to run a separate EGC to the disco.
Click to expand...

If the pipe is bad how long do you think the conductors are going to last buried in concrete in a corroded pipe ? The conductors may not be in as good of condition as you think, have you run a Megger test on them ? You may need to get creative on a new route for a feeder.
 
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