Grounding - What to Check

The electrical ground at your house ensures that, if there is a short on a piece of electrical equipment, the current will flow through the ground system and trip a breaker or blow a fuse to offer protection from electrocution.

Grounding also is the primary path through which a surge protector dissipates energy from a surge. A good ground is essential to the safe and reliable operation of any piece of electrical equipment you might have in your home.

The ground acts like a drain in a sink to lead current away from the home. As with any sink, the larger the drain the quicker the current disappears. A ground system's ability to dissipate electricity is measured in ohms.

Most codes call for a ground system of 25 ohms or less, with 0 ohms being the theoretical "perfect ground." While, as a practical matter, you can't get to zero ohms, you certainly can get to 25 ohms if the ground rods are properly installed.

Equally important is the bonding of all line and pipes entering the house to a single ground point. This means that the electrical, cable TV, water and telephone systems should all be tied together with electrical conductors.

In the past, electricians tied the phone or cable ground to the water closet spigot and used the copper pipe of the water system as the tie line. With the use of plastic pipe in newly constructed homes, this approach is no longer practical.

Check your own home to see that a wire comes out of your meter and leads to a ground rod. This wire or rod should be connected to another wire that leads to the main water pipe, cable television and phone system. If your phone or cable has a separate ground rod that's not connected back to the electrical ground rod it's unsafe and probably a violation of the local electrical code.