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New home not properly grounded.

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Phelpstx

Member
Location
Dallas Texas
Occupation
Retired Electrician
I just noticed tonight that our 4 month old refrigerator which sits right next to our double oven is now having issues dispensing water. Makes a humming sound. So I’m thinking it’s possible this happened around the same time as we were having issues with the double oven.

Im not a appliance man but if our double oven never had a strong ground could it have potentially caused a internal surge while it was turned on which may have caused the gfci in the garage to trip, frig water dispensers
to be bad, afci circuit above it to trip, and cause surge protectors to go bad?

It didn’t make sense to me why our oven would have caused such chaos but now that I know we did not have a ground in the main lug panel it’s starting to make more sense.

I really appreciate all of your input helping me understand better what’s going on. Thanks for your help.
 
E

Earthed

Member
Location
Ohio
Occupation
Electrical Inspector, Plumbing Inspector, Residential Building Official
It appears that your AHJ allows a H-H-N past the 1st disconnect. A bonding screw in the panel is all you would have needed. Or, you could have made it a H-H-N-G.

Edit. I forgot to mention it looks like you have created multiple paralleled paths in this configuration. 'bare' conductors
 
P

Phelpstx

Member
Location
Dallas Texas
Occupation
Retired Electrician
Does anyone have or know where I can get an illustration showing a 200 amp electric service with main disconnect and main lug panel that shows how it should be wired and bonded / grounded by National Electrical code?

I’m thinking it may be easier to explain to the builder if I have an illustration to show them how our electric should have been wired.
Thanks
 
ptonsparky

ptonsparky

Tom
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
Phelpstx said:
Does anyone have or know where I can get an illustration showing a 200 amp electric service with main disconnect and main lug panel that shows how it should be wired and bonded / grounded by National Electrical code?

I’m thinking it may be easier to explain to the builder if I have an illustration to show them how our electric should have been wired.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Look in the Free Stuff.
 
P

Phelpstx

Member
Location
Dallas Texas
Occupation
Retired Electrician
cadpoint said:
What am I looking at on the bottom right in respects to those breaker's, AFCI's ?
Click to expand...
Im not sure. Are you talking about the white line? If so that was created when I added text to the picture to show the new ground that was installed to the main disconnect. The other ground that you see on the bottom right of the panel is the gas bond.
 
cadpoint

cadpoint

Senior Member
Location
Durham, NC
Re-looking at it The top of the panel has all (most) of the AFCI's
The Single "white tab" breakers also look like their AFCI's

Two wires under 15 AMP breakers?

I can only zoom in once and still can't see it clearly.
 
Little Bill

Little Bill

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Tennessee NEC:2017
Occupation
Semi-Retired Electrician
Only thing I can think of as to why there wasn't an EGC ran to the inside panel is the outside disconnect is labeled "emergency disconnect". The ED is required if they on the 2020 or later. I think there is an exception that allows it to not be the service disconnect.

The bare #6 should be landed on the neutral bar in the disconnect, or removed. The ground, or lack of, would have no effect on the GFCI tripping. There is some other problem, either with the appliance or the GFCI.
 
P

Phelpstx

Member
Location
Dallas Texas
Occupation
Retired Electrician
Little Bill said:
Only thing I can think of as to why there wasn't an EGC ran to the inside panel is the outside disconnect is labeled "emergency disconnect". The ED is required if they on the 2020 or later. I think there is an exception that allows it to not be the service disconnect.

The bare #6 should be landed on the neutral bar in the disconnect, or removed. The ground, or lack of, would have no effect on the GFCI tripping. There is some other problem, either with the appliance or the GFCI.
Click to expand...
I had the builders electrician, and city inspector out and they just flat out missed the EGC from the main disconnect to the main lug panel.

We are going to re-locate all the bare coppers to the neutral bar in the main disconnect.

My initial thought was there was some internal problem with our double oven because we only experienced this issue when we would use the lower part of our double oven. This was before I realized that they did not have the main ground wire from the main disconnect in our main lug panel.

So far to this point using the double oven only caused the garage gfci to trip, caused arcing in our main lug panel, blew out two surge protectors which were located directly above our kitchen which caused the afci to trip, and it caused our new refrigerator water dispenser to stop working which sits right next to the double oven.

We’ve decided not to use our double oven until it’s replaced. In the mean time I’m going to use an ideal suretest circuit analyzer to check all the wiring for voltage drops, wiring, impedance. I am also going to test all the afci’s and gfcis to make sure they work in the home.

I had requested for the builders electrician to come out and test the ohms for our ground rod, u/f ground. It should be less than 25 ohms correct? I think that the wiring inside the home is probably fine and not melted or deteriorated in anyway but I may have them do insulation resistance testing on the oven wire.

Quite frankly it scares the living daylights out of me that our home went almost a year without being properly grounded. I have had experience with a home that was not grounded properly that had heavy surges from lightning in which caused the insulation to melt inside the walls and caught the home on fire.

My Dad was a state licensed electrician and was in business for over 35 years. Even after I got my electrical license I would always ask for his opinion and help. He passed away 5 years ago and I can’t thank you all enough for all the help and support to try to figure out what’s going on. Y’all rock!!! Thank you.
 
R

retirede

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Phelpstx said:
I had the builders electrician, and city inspector out and they just flat out missed the EGC from the main disconnect to the main lug panel.

We are going to re-locate all the bare coppers to the neutral bar in the main disconnect.

My initial thought was there was some internal problem with our double oven because we only experienced this issue when we would use the lower part of our double oven. This was before I realized that they did not have the main ground wire from the main disconnect in our main lug panel.

So far to this point using the double oven only caused the garage gfci to trip, caused arcing in our main lug panel, blew out two surge protectors which were located directly above our kitchen which caused the afci to trip, and it caused our new refrigerator water dispenser to stop working which sits right next to the double oven.

We’ve decided not to use our double oven until it’s replaced. In the mean time I’m going to use an ideal suretest circuit analyzer to check all the wiring for voltage drops, wiring, impedance. I am also going to test all the afci’s and gfcis to make sure they work in the home.

I had requested for the builders electrician to come out and test the ohms for our ground rod, u/f ground. It should be less than 25 ohms correct? I think that the wiring inside the home is probably fine and not melted or deteriorated in anyway but I may have them do insulation resistance testing on the oven wire.

Quite frankly it scares the living daylights out of me that our home went almost a year without being properly grounded. I have had experience with a home that was not grounded properly that had heavy surges from lightning in which caused the insulation to melt inside the walls and caught the home on fire.

My Dad was a state licensed electrician and was in business for over 35 years. Even after I got my electrical license I would always ask for his opinion and help. He passed away 5 years ago and I can’t thank you all enough for all the help and support to try to figure out what’s going on. Y’all rock!!! Thank you.
Click to expand...

25 ohms is required only if your GES is a single rod. Anything else, it doesn’t apply. And this is not related to your problem. The 25 ohm thing is arbitrary and considered mostly meaningless by many on here.
Since it seems like you have a good relationship with the electrician, I wouldn’t ask them to measure this - it will only cost you points!
 
P

Phelpstx

Member
Location
Dallas Texas
Occupation
Retired Electrician
retirede said:
25 ohms is required only if your GES is a single rod. Anything else, it doesn’t apply. And this is not related to your problem. The 25 ohm thing is arbitrary and considered mostly meaningless by many on here.
Since it seems like you have a good relationship with the electrician, I wouldn’t ask them to measure this - it will only cost you points!
Click to expand...
Good point! So the 25 ohms would not apply since I have a single rod and U/f ground?

If I ever forgot to ground a main panel for a customer I would own that. Do whatever it takes to give customer peace of mind to make sure their home is safe.

Does anyone think it’s crazy to do insulation resistance testing to ensure no wiring is damaged behind the walls, since our home was not grounded for almost a year?

I’m hoping using the ideal suretest circuit analyzer will give me enough information to give me peace of mind.
 
P

Phelpstx

Member
Location
Dallas Texas
Occupation
Retired Electrician
Can anyone explain why my double oven may have caused our garage gfci to trip, afci circuit above it to trip, cause damage to our refrigerator that sits right next to it?

My only guess was because our main ground was missing. All the other connections in our main panel were torqued with no loose connections.
 
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