sprinkler pipe

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donny145

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In residential basements that are unfinished they run copper piping for the sprinklers-rest of the house they use plastic.....Plastic line from street--do they have to bond the copper lines in the basement to the main service????
 
250.104 Bonding of Piping Systems and Exposed Structural Steel.
(A) Metal Water Piping. The metal water piping system shall be bonded as required in (1), (2), (3), or (4) of this section. The bonding jumper(s) shall be installed in accordance with 250.64(A), (B), and (E). The points of attachment of the bonding jumper(s) shall be accessible.
(1) General. Metal water piping system(s) installed in or attached to a building or structure shall be bonded to the service equipment enclosure, the grounded conductor at the service, the grounding electrode conductor where of sufficient size, or to the one or more grounding electrodes used. The bonding jumper(s) shall be sized in accordance with Table 250.66 except as permitted in 250.104(A)(2) and (A)(3).
 
As DCL posted, YES! Any metal piping in the building should be bonded. This is to insure that in the case of a ground fault condition, the breaker will trip. Think of what would happen if this piping wasn't grounded, and somehow the piping became energized.......an accident waiting to happen.
 
Inspectors around here put sprinkler systems into 250.102(B) - Other Metal Piping. Therefore it only needs bonding if it's likely to become energized. Check with your AHJ.
 
sprinkler

sprinkler

The arguement that was discussed was if it is copper only in the basement connected to plastic from the street --how can it become energized????? That was the sticking point-could it become energized.....thanks Donny
 
I think the think to remember is any piece of metal in a building has the potential to become energized. Sometimes the examples get pretty far fetched, but the thing to consider would be if a romex were to have an exposed conductor (exposed either through poor installation or other physical damage) that came in contact with the metal, in the case the sprinkler pipe, and that pipe were not properly grounded to cause the breaker to trip, then that length of pipe or piping system would now become energized throughout the entire run.
 
racerdave3 said:
Sometimes the examples get pretty far fetched
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Very first article in the code says that the code covers practical safeguarding of people and property. Once you wander into "far fetched" you, by definition, have left the area of practical.
 
paul said:
Very first article in the code says that the code covers practical safeguarding of people and property. Once you wander into "far fetched" you, by definition, have left the area of practical.
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Paul, an example of far fetched is if the homeowner goes down into the basement and decides they need power for something and drapes a 15 year old extension cord over the piping, including the sprinkler piping mentioned here, and this cord has bare spots in it from years of use. If a bare spot has a bare conductor showing and energizes a piece of ungrounded piping, then the issue becomes a practical problem :cool: At this point someone someone takes a picture of it and we all see it at the end of EC&M magazine :grin:
 
I think $15 worth of #4 solid CU and ten minutes is not a high price to safe guard a life. Working as a service tech I see "far fetched" HO electrical work every day. Just recently I found a non-GFCI outlet in a kitchen, powered off a switch with no neutral. They got their return path by simply attaching a wire from the outlet neutral terminal to the metal box that was grounded by casual contact with the switch box. Homeowners will do just about anything to save a buck.
 
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