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This is the guy who once said to have a bank evacuated because he tested the heat strips during a maintenance. Brian, all: hey, hey, hey everybody. This is brian, and i promised you that this would be a two part series. Two part series on electrical considerations: electrical myths.

I guess that's what I said and I'm not going to back down on that promise. I make a promise to you listener to HVAC school. What we'll call you Bob? Let's say your name is Bob. Maybe your name is Bob, maybe it isn't but Bob.

When I make a commitment to you, I keep my promise and today we're gon na talk about grounding and bonding, but before I do that, I just want to tell you that I am not the expert on grounding and bonding. Now I am a licensed electrician run and in the state of Florida. What that means is that I worked for a licensed electrical contracting company and in that capacity I have done many many electrical repairs and I actually my first job was as an electrical apprentice. So I've done electrical work for a long time and because of that, I'm fairly familiar with the NEC, but just recently I've been digging in more and more to the NEC.

But even more than reading the NEC I've been paying a lot of attention to the stuff that Mike Holt has been putting out on the internet, and previously you had to buy his DVDs and all this to get this content. But he's been putting a lot of stuff about it on his YouTube channel. So before I get into this, I want to suggest that you watch what he has. He has a great video on grounding surrounding safety, I think, is what it's called on YouTube.

So if you go to his YouTube channel watch his videos he's got really really good stuff, but I'm gon na speak specifically to some myths that exist in the HVAC industry or that I've heard or have come in contact with relating to grounding and bonding. This is something that happened to me when I was probably 19 years old, 19 20 years old, and I was doing a start-up on a system on a house that the house had power applied to it. But the air conditioner had not even been whipped in yet, and I specifically remember that, and so there was no high voltage whip going to the condenser. So I'm kneeling down and I'm going to wire up this system and every time I touch the casing of this condenser, I get shocked like a decent shock and you know, depending on how I can figure, my body would be more or less and I would feel It differently, but I just kept getting shocked I kept going back to, and I was thinking that was crazy, and so I go to the building super and who happens to be walking by and I'm like, I'm like dude.

This thing is something's wrong. Here he's like no, you kidding me there's not even any power going to it. So eventually I take a meter and I and I just try different locations and eventually I can see that in between ground like physical ground, like I can't remember exactly how I did it, but I think I actually stuck a meter lead into the ground in one Place and in between the unit - and I saw that there was actually voltage - was like something's reading, something like 80 90 volts and I I went to him and I showed him and he's like. Ah, something does have to be wrong and at the time I thought that was that the building wasn't grounded properly.

That was my diagnosis is that in the building, let's not have been grounded properly, but now looking back, I realized what was wrong with the building. Is that the building actually had some issue with how the neutral was connected, either the neutral where it went into the main transformer of the building or where it was connected inside the panel, and I'm gon na tell you why that is so, let's start with a Misconception the misconception is the myth is that current goes to ground that all current comes from a ghost ground. I used to say this motor back when I first started in the trade I did that it's going to ground and that's the purpose of your ground rod is so the current can go to ground. Electrons can go to ground right.

Well, that is false. The transformer that feeds the building is just like a battery in this regard. Now it's alternating current, obviously, but if you think of a battery or a generator or an alternator or an inverter, anything that you are ever connecting to in order to create a potential difference. A difference in energy States is one way of saying it.

A difference in charges is another way of saying it. So when we're measuring voltage it's what we're measuring is potential difference. We're saying all right. This is at this point, has negative 120 volts and at this point has positive 120 volts and when you compare them together, then you have 240 volts between them between these two legs of power.

That's an explanation of potential difference. So when we're reading voltage, that's what we're doing we're showing two different energy states and difference in charges and so current is a motion of electrons between those differences in charges. So if you have a battery of a 9-volt battery, there's a nine volt difference in charges between those two points and the electrons move out of one terminal and go to the other side. You know this right well for some reason: when we have a building, we think that ground has something to do with this, and ground has nothing to do with this.

Nothing is going to ground or nothing should be going to ground. It's all going back to the power source and even if it is getting carried on the ground conductor or on to the ground rod. It's doing that in order to get back to the power source in the power source in a building in your house or in a commercial building, is the transformer whether it's mounted on the polar on the ground, that's where it all starts and on that transformer. If it's a typical single-phase application, you have three terminals, you have your one leg of power, which is 120 volts to the exo terminal, which is the neutral, essentially what we call neutral, the XO terminal on the transformer, and then you have the other leg of 120 Volts so between the two.

You have 240 volts and again, I'm speaking in round numbers here, obviously, but between the two you have 240 volts and then from each to the XO terminal. What we call neutral, you have 120, you have 120 volts so 240 between legs, 122, each okay and here's. What you have to know is that those two 120 volt legs are directly out of phase with each other and the reason that that is the reason that that has to be is because that power is created from a single phase of power. So when we think of three-phase the power generated at a power company is three comes in three phases: in a single phase: application on your house or on a small commercial building, where you only have single phase power they're only taking one phase and they're splitting it.

So they're they're taking it into a transformer. If you look at a transformer, go outside and look kind of transformer on a pole, that's going into a house. Maybe you live in a place that there aren't any of those door. I live it's very rural and so they're all they are they still these these poles out these transformers mounted up on poles, and so, if you look at that, you'll see that you have your.

You really only have one power leg going into that transformer. There's only one leg of power other than that it's just ground, slash neutral, going into it. But do you have one leg of power going into that transformer and that one leg of power is being split into two and how it's doing that is when it goes into that transformer you have you. The transformer is wrapped in opposite directions, so that creates an opposite direction sine wave.

So now one one leg of your 120 is one sine wave and the other leg of your hundred twenty is the exact opposite sine wave, exact opposite sign angle. So when one is peaking, the other is valuing all right, but that's generated from one phase, which is why they always have to be completely out of phase from each other, because they're only created from one leg of power. They can be no other way, and so you really only have this one leg of power coming in and then your neutral / ground and I'm gon na get into the difference. But when you are connecting when you are connecting to that transformer to go into your in your service so where it goes down into your meter base, all of the power is either a balance between those two legs.

All the current is either a balance between those two legs or it's between one of those legs and that EXO terminal which is neutral, and so, if any power, any current is going from your home or building to ground. Then it's actually traveling through the ground and going back to that transformer. It's going back to the source just like it does in the case of a battery, just like it does in the case of a transformer or an inverter or a generator, no matter what the case is. It's always going back to the if it's going to ground.

It's only going to ground in order to get to the source, because there's no other path, which is why, when you have a situation where you're not properly connected to neutral neutral, isn't correctly bonded to ground one way or another. Whether that's because there is actually a broken neutral wire in between the pole, the the transformer on the pole of the transform on the ground in the house or because it's not properly connected in the panel either of those circumstances, will result in all sorts of crazy Problems like the one that shocked me because what's happening what happened in that application and later I was able to find out what was going on as there was actually an oven outlet that had been turned on the the breaker had been turned on, but the outlet Hadn't been installed yet, and so one of those hot legs had a wire, not missing off of it, and it was touching the the casing, and so it was energizing equipment ground in the entire building. So the entire building had an energized equipment ground and that equipment ground was not connected properly back to neutral. In order to do what we call clearing the ground fault, so the entire building was energized, but it wasn't clearing the ground fault, and this is with a completely intact ground rod in place.

So you had all of this. So that's why, when I was touching that unit, that unit was connected to ground, meaning it was grounded to everything else, but the entire building wasn't connected appropriately back to neutral. So it was using me as a path in order to get back to the to the earth and and then connect back to that pole, and so I was I was getting shocked, because this is the next myth. The next myth is is that is that current takes the path of least resistance.

Okay, current does not take the path of least not only take the path of least resistance. Current takes all appropriate paths, so any good path that you give current to take it's going to take, and we know this if you wire up a parallel light circuit. So let's say: let's do this really simply, let's say you have two points. You have one point.

That's neutral in one point: that's 120 volts and you know in order to make a light circuit. You just connect in between those two and it runs through a light. But let's say you had one light that had 90 ohms and the bulb and another light that at 30 ohms in the bulb and another light that had 10 ohms in the bulb okay and they you all wired them all in parallel. So so electricity current could take any of those paths.

It's going to take all three of those paths and all of those lights are gon na light up. It's not just gon na take one, and so this idea that it only takes the path of least resistance is just silly, and so when we, when we say oh well, the problem with that house was that it didn't have a ground rod and so the ground Rod was the problem; no, it did have a ground rod and current was flowing through the ground rod, but it was also flowing through me when I also became a ground rod. If you follow, if you get, if you catch my drift here and so how a grounding circuit is designed in a building, is designed in such a way so that it is connected back to neutral so that if something were to connect to ground to equipment ground, So you have a you: have this outlet that was that was grounded out, that this hot leg was touching the metal parts that, because it's connected back to neutral, because it's connected back to the source. It's a no load path, which means it will draw extremely high.

Amperage trim the high current, which will then trip the breaker. In this case, it wasn't tripping the breaker because, instead of flowing through a really no load path, really low resistance path directly back to the source, it was traveling through a ground rod through the earth in between and through my body in order to get back to The source, so there was current flowing, there was current moving electrons were moving, but it wasn't enough. The amperage wasn't high enough to trip the breaker. I don't know what it was in retrospect.

I wish I had been able to go back to that site now and do some testing, because at the time I was ignorant - and I thought it was just too like a ground rod, so I wish I could. I can actually see what it really was. The point is: is that the reason why the breaker trips is because we are intentionally giving it a no load path or a very, very low resistance path back to the source not to ground? I want to say that again we're giving it a very, very low resistance path back to the source, not to ground, so the question becomes okay. Well, why do we? Why do we have grounds at all? Why do we have grounds? What's? Why do we have ground rods? I should say well, first of all, let's talk about some terms so when we say things that are connected together, the term that we should be using is bonded, so we are bonding all of our equipment to ground and when something is grounded, it means that it Is connected to ground and everything that we have should be connected to ground, so all of our equipment is bonded together to what we call equipment ground.

Everything is everything is interconnected to one another and then we connect that to a ground rod. But then we also connect that back to the power source, which is what we, which is the transformer right. But it's that's the XO terminal, that's neutral. So back at your main distribution panel, you're connecting ground to neutral at that main panel that main source your meter base, whatever the case may be you're connecting neutral to ground, so that the all the equipment ground is connected to the back to neutral.

And it's going to a ground rod, so we call it a grounded assembly because it is connected to a ground rod. However, current is not going to that ground rod. If current is going to that ground rod, something is seriously seriously seriously wrong. Now there is one case where that will happen and something is seriously seriously seriously wrong when it does and that's when you get a lightning strike or a huge surge coming down your distribution lines.

Now, I'm not going to get into the theory of exactly how this all works and why it is, and everything but lightning is a very high voltage, very high frequency, the power source and when that happens, there's all these electromagnetic pulses that occur and we want those Electromagnetic pulses to dissipate into earth as quickly as possible and not through your body, and so we have all these grounded assemblies that actually go to the actual ground. So when I say grounded I mean to the earth in this case so that they can dissipate easily. If it wasn't for lightning, if it wasn't for these high high frequency, high voltage occurrences, that can happen and it can be lightning, but it can also be actually in the distribution line. So let's say you had a really high voltage transformer that exploded and and the high-voltage energy came down the line actually from that.

That can also cause it. But it's it's a rare occurrence, it's something that shouldn't be happening, but when that does happen we have these risks. If that would never happen, if we never had any risk of lightning, we never had any risk of high-voltage power surges. Then we wouldn't need to ground our homes at all.

In fact, it would probably be better if we didn't ground them, because then you would have less chances of actually being electrocuted in your in your home, but - and I won't get into that because that's that's another confusing conversation. But the point is: is that what we do have is grounded and it is grounded to ground with the lightning rods with with electrodes to your well to your rebar inside your concrete, whatever the case may be because of these rare occurrences, where you have this very High high voltage, high frequency power now for those of you who hear me, say high frequency and you're saying what wait wait, wait, it's DC, lightning is DC, well kind of, but lightning is, does go on and off, and so there is a frequency to lightning and The frequencies of lightning is very, very high, so we're not gon na get in semantics here, but lightning is actually what we would call a very high voltage DC high frequency power source and in some cases lightning actually does come in pulses. So because of that, there's all of this electromagnetic energy, that has to be dissipated, earth point being your ground rod has nothing to do with the day-to-day operation of your electrical systems, other than dissipating transients. Is there some effect they can that it can have on dissipating electromagnetic fields in general or in electrostatic build-up between different devices and maybe in some rare cases, but in most cases what what actually prevents that is, the bonding the connection of all equipment together through equipment Ground one example of an abnormal condition.

Where we see this, is you will bond together, pool equipment, so pool equipment will all actually be separately bonded together, in addition to the electrical circuit and the reason for that is actually to prevent corrosion. So a lot of people think that has something to do with the electrical. It really isn't it's actually to prevent electrostatic charges from building it between them and which can lead to dielectric corrosion, and I may be saying that wrong, but that's that is how it works. So, anyway, there's there's a lot of different reasons why you want to connect metal parts together, and it really is only metal parts, but this comes into play, for example, I'll give it I'll give an example.

Here of something comes up. A lot with AC technicians is you'll, you'll have a condenser fan motor that will come with a ground wire on it and you'll notice that the original condenser fan motor did not have a ground wire on it right and so a lot of guys think. Well. I have to connect that ground wire.

Well, really you don't you need to connect that ground wire if the original assembly needed a ground wire because of the top was made of a composite material. So let's say you worked on a pool heater, a lot of pool heaters, have plastic tops on them, and so, if you have a pool heater with a plastic top, you have to use that ground wire, because otherwise that assembly, the body of that motor, is not Grounded to equipment ground, but when you connect to a typical condenser top that's made of metal, you don't need to use a separate ground wire because that entire thing is connected to the metal of the top, which is then connected to equipment ground. So there's things like this: that you can there's considerations here and the point is to make sure that all of your metal parts are all connected together. Everything in the building, all the metal parts are all connected together.

That's what we call equipment, ground and they're all bonded together connected together, there's another important thing here, though, and that is that you only want to connect to neutral at one point and when I first heard this, I thought well why? Why does it make any difference? It doesn't it can't it can't possibly make any difference whether or not you have neutral connected to ground at multiple points or just one point, but it actually does make a difference, because your neutral is designed to carry all of your current back to the source. That's the design equipment ground shouldn't have any current on it. If it does have a current on it, either it's a very, very small amount or it's a none designed circumstance. So let me give you a quick example: let's say you have a furnace and there's some current being carried back on the ground wire back to the panel.

Well, the only reason that there should be any current on that ground wire would be like, with a with a flame sensing rod, a flame rectifier, where there's a small amount leaking to ground itself for flame rectification, but we're talking a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of current. If any of the current is going out of that, blower took ground, that's a problem. It needs to all be carried back on neutral, and so, if that, let's say that that furnace was connected to a ground fault circuit, interrupter GFCI, not that that would be a normal condition. But let's just say that it was.

It's actually observing to see all right. How much current is being carried out on hot and then how much is being carried back on neutral? Those two have to balance. If there's an imbalance, then it's going to shut the thing off, because there shouldn't be any current being carried back on the ground. If you connect neutral and ground together in multiple places, then you'll have your neutral current being carried in parallel, but I mean those two conductors and that will cause problems.

So you only want. You only want your equipment ground to be there. So that way, it can create a ground fault. So it's actually designed all of this stuff being connected together is designed so that way, if there is a circumstance that current is going to ground, that it's going to trip the breaker right, that's what we want it to do.

If you have a hairdryer and you're, you know you're in the bathroom, you want it to shut off. If that hairdryer, the internal workings of that hairdryer are connecting to the casing in such a way that it could shock you or your toaster or everything, you don't want any of these parts that have the potential of touching you and your family to be energized, and So if there is a case where they are energized, then that is going to go to equipment ground. It's going to trip the breaker all right, but only because that equipment ground is connected to neutral, because if that equipment ground is not connected to neutral. At one point where it actually goes into the house of the house or building so the main panel, they should be connected together.

If it's not, then you run a safety risk both ways. If you have more than one connection, you run a safety risk, because now you have current being carried in parallel along those two conductors and if it's not connected at all, you have a major safety risk, just like the one that I ran into when I was Getting shocked being kneeled down at the condenser, because I was acting like another another ground rod with that current was flowing through me to get back to that transformer to get back to that EXO terminal on that transformer, because the current doesn't want to go to ground It wants to take all paths in order to get back to that EXO terminal to get back to the source, just like a battery, just like a 24 volt transformer that we use. So another thing that kind of blew my mind when I was a young technician is that would take a took a transformer one time and I took the to 24. Volt leads off the transformer, so I had.

I had turned 40 volt power going into it, and I took the tour to 24. Volt leads coming off of a 40, be a transformer. I think it was, and I accidentally touched, the hot lead to ground and the other one. The ground side wasn't connected to anything, but I accidentally touched the hot lead to ground and nothing happened so that red wire coming off that 24 of the 24 volts coming off of that transformer, I test you to ground.

I said red wire. I should have said red wire: who cares what the color was if the 24 volts had, that transformer touched it to ground and nothing happened. That's like what what what on earth something about this transformer. So then, I took the other side with the with the hot side disconnected, and I touched it to ground, so the common side of the transformer nothing happened.

What gives with this transformer so then I took both of them touched him to ground together and then, of course, it blew. The transformer blew the blew the fuse, and so I'm thinking to myself. What's what's wrong with this transformer doesn't have a you know, it doesn't know which side is ground well, what we observe with a 24 volt transformer is the same thing that exists with the distribution transformer coming into a building. The exact same condition that neutral terminal on that transformer that distribution transformer coming into the building - it's grounded, meaning it has a rod going to ground.

At the pole I mean, if you look at your pole, there's usually a little wire running down the side and it goes to ground right on that on that pole or inside that housing. That's on the ground outside of the building, and so it's grounded and we tend to think oh well. We dedicated the ground, that's one way that will say it and that's not technically incorrect, but it messes with our brains of how we think about it. It's not that we're telling the transformer which part of the transformer is ground.

We're telling the ground we're creating a path through ground is all that we're doing, and so, when we take the common side of a 24 volt transformer and we connect it to ground, we dedicate a ground. It's a term. We use you dedicate the ground right. So now this common is dedicated ground, we're not doing anything, we're not changing anything in that transformer.

All that we're doing is we're just creating a path to one side of that transformer through ground, so we're making ground into a wire that connects back to that point of the transformer. If that makes sense, and so when that XO terminal on that distribution transformer outside they're connecting that EXO terminal that neutral terminal to ground all that work, all that they're doing is making round and tool wire that connects to that terminal. And so now there's a path that exists between the through the ground in between the ground in your house and then in that EXO terminal and that ground is really rendered moot. It doesn't mean anything until you no longer have a path between Manute rolls, so you lose your neutral wire, neutral wire gets broken, and now it will use the earth.

But that is not the intention of that at all. The intention of that ground isn't has nothing to do with neutral. It has everything to do with lightning strikes power surges that type of thing. But if you were to lose it, then ground will act as a conductor, just a really really crappy one.

It's a terrible conductor and it's a it's. It's hardly any better conductor than your body, which is why you end up getting shocked when you lose neutral. To give you another example of this at our office, where we currently might be where I currently am now, we bought a new building and that's a new, my new office, and I'm sending it now it's right behind us. Until when we were looking at the building, we were, there was some issue with one of the tenants.

There was some sort of electrical and consideration. I don't even remember exactly what it was, but I got to looking at the exterior exterior panel on this building, and so it has the main, the main wires coming in, because there's multiple meters and then those wires go into these separate meters. And I was noticing that, where this, this giant can were the main feeders come in, where that connected to the meter base panels, there were screws that connected them and those screws had arcing at every screw to his arcing at every screw point, and it was pretty Clear that the screw points were carrying a current for whatever reason, and so the part of the issue that was going on in one of these spaces. If I remember correctly was there was a voltage drop, so there was a like an inconsistent, inconsistent voltage.

There was seeing what they thought was a voltage drop, but it's really just they were reading low voltage in certain circumstances. And what was happening is that in between these main feeders and the meter bases, they didn't run a neutral connection, so the neutral was grounded inside the meter base like it should be only at one point so that was correct, neutral was connected to ground right there And then it went to the ground rods, but but then there was no jumper connection, no neutral jumper between the main distribution wires and inside the meter base. So there's this big gap here and so in between these two panels, the only neutral is carried between the two panels through these little screws that connect them. So these little screws whenever somebody was running a significant amount of 120 volt load in the building.

I'm sure these things are getting cherry red because they're they're having to act as the connection wire in between these two panels and they were never designed for it. They're just mounting screws and there's a little tiny little tiny hex head mounting screws in between these two panels, and so that's a case where this building has been this way for since it was built them and the things probably 20 years old, 25 years old. And it's been this way, the entire time, because there isn't proper connection in the neutral and a lot of times. This happens because we have this misconception that oh well, the ground is intact.

We have the ground rod, that's intact, it's connected, so we're good right. No, it needs to get back to neutral, that's the source, and so all of your all of your current is either going in between the two legs and single-phase 240 volts, that's between the two legs, or it's going between one of the legs back to neutral. It's not going to ground ground is for lightning ground is for power surges. Any event that happens that has an undesigned high voltage or high-frequency high-voltage high-frequency current coming down your distribution lines.

I'll give you another example: a lot of people think that you put in more ground rods. That's going to solve something. Putting in more ground rods does nothing ground. Rods are not going to, as my cold always often says, that ground rods are not going to clear.

A fault ground rods are not going to trip your breaker enough to save you. The only way that you're gon na have enough current flow in order to trip the breaker is, if you have a direct connection back to the power source. So the reason why your breaker trips, on your compressor, when it shorts out, is because it's going to ground, which is then connected to neutral, which makes a path back in that EXO terminal between EXO and one of the legs inside the transformer. I keep saying EXO terminal EXO terminal is where the neutral connects at the main distribution transformer inside or not inside, outside the building, where it feeds into your and your building.

That's where it ends up at, because that transformer is the power source into your building. So having more ground rods, doesn't do anything, in fact, if you have two ground rods on two opposite sides of the house, if you have a ground strike by one side of the house, and it can travel through that ground rod into your into your grounded assembly In your house and then get to the other ground rod to the other side, you're, actually exposing your house to current with lightning. When you do that, so you really only want to have the ground rods that are required by that are required to do the job that they're designed to do, and no more than that. I had a friend of mine talked about how, when he was in the military, he would go around just pounding round rods all over the place in order to try to get a better neutral connection, and he wondered why it would never work well.

Because if you have an issue with clearing ground faults or safety or whatever the case may be an energized grounding assembly inside of a building equipment ground, as we call it adding more ground rods, doesn't fix that problem. What fix that problem is figuring out? Why? You have a improper, neutral connection back to the power source. That's what you have to find out why you have an improper, neutral connection, because that's what's causing that structure to be energized? Ok, if you have an issue where ground is carrying, if your ground conductors are carrying current, then you have to figure out well, where are they connected to neutral in more than one place, because they shouldn't only be connected in one place right where they come in? The building, if your ground, if you're grounding conductors, are carrying current, then that means that they're connected in multiple places, and so an example of this would be, and I've seen this time and time again where you could have in an outlet. You could have the ground wire a bare ground, wire, touching neutral.

Well, when those two touch, then it creates a parallel path where you are carrying current back down your grounding assembly and that can cause some issues. It's not your grounding wire is not designed to carry regular current. It's just there to ground all of the equipment ground so that everything is interconnected, which is also, coincidentally, why grounding conductors in some cases, don't even have to be as large as their neutral counterparts and so using equipment ground as a neutral. In any case, you know you're tempted, I know you guys have been tempted before sake say if you're putting a water softening installing water softening equipment on with a 240 volt well pump, and you don't have it, you don't have a neutral there right and so well I'll just connect to equipment round right, it goes back to the same place.

Know your equipment. Ground is not designed to carry regular current. It's only there in the case of a fault. That's what it's here for, if you start carrying current on it now you compromise the integrity of that system.

It's so that everything is all connected in the building, with no current on it. If currents on it, then it's designed so that way it trips, it's a it's, a good, solid, no load path back to neutral, so that a trips, a breaker and it saves people's lives. That's that whole equipment assembly, that's what it's designed for in order to create a fault so that it trips a breaker so that it saves someone's life. The ground rod is to protect from lightning - and I know I'm beating this dead horse.

But here's what happened to me built this brand-new house standing in the shower, hear this loud boom outside next thing. I know I'm basically on the floor, I'm in my heads, my heads down between my knees and I'm like what the heck just happened here. Well, what happened was, is we had a ground strike right? Next to the house, I say that I never found anything on the house itself that showed that the house itself got struck took out my TV stereo, some other electronics in the house, but the house was definitely it seemed like he got struck very close to the House, not the house itself, could've been the house itself, but regardless I have plastic pipes in my house. It's not like there was lightning that came through the metal pipes and then hit me because I was you know, standing on a drain or something my entire house is grounded, and so the rebar in my house is grounded in the electrode, and so those electromagnetic pulses Go through the concrete and through everything, and they ended up traveling through the water and into me, as I felt it, I mean it was a good decent, decent shock.

I've been shocked many times in my life as an AC tech and as an electrician, and it was comparable to that type of shock. So the point there is is that we think in we think in terms of you know how the grounding is gon na protect us whatever in that particular case, it helps it dissipate more quickly, but in some ways it actually, you know all the grounding carried the Electrons through my house, it just kept it from creating a fire, so nothing caught on fire in my house, but it did destroy some electronics and it shocked dattara to me. If my house wasn't grounded didn't, have a grounding electrode, we would run the risk of something catching fire, but it would have actually been less likely to have shocked me in the shower because the you know that wouldn't necessarily have been connected. So you understand the point here: is that there's ain't a specific intent for ground rods and for grounding, and it does serve a purpose.

It does prevent fires, it prevents issues inside of homes. It prevents issues where you have. You know severe wiring damage in walls and all this because of the grounded assemblies, and it helps it dissipate more quickly, but this idea that grounding protects you in this universal sense is just incorrect. The most important thing is that everything all the metal parts in your house have any electricity near them any any current near them are all connected together through proper equipment grounding.

So if there's anything that you're tempted to not ground properly, because you have some excuse or reason - don't do that and also recognize that it's not going to ground none of that currents going to ground all right. So that's basically all I wanted to say there. So hopefully, just dispelling some myths. I was told by somebody I did a little article about this and I was told that it was not a complete look at it and I don't claim that it is a complete look at the subject it.

It's. A very brief. Look at the subject, and obviously with some stories and things just to kind of get you to wrap your head around. This idea of grounding versus bonding versus equipment grounding versus what the purpose of the ground rods are in the first place.

Just so that you have a better a little better understanding of that, but if you want to dig deeper into it, Michael actually has a book called a grounding and bonding, which is a great resource that talks specifically about this and digs into the NEC codes related To this, as always, I would suggest that you look at true tech tools. I haven't been mentioning them so much in the last couple episodes. But if you go to true tech tools, you can find all the tools that you need for your HVAC needs. Some great electrical meters, like I've, mentioned before I've, been really enjoying the test at 770 3 plant meter for a lot of different reasons.

So you can look at that and if you use the upper could get schooled at check out. Just all one word: no caps get schooled at checkout, then you can get an 8 % discount currently so get that while supplies last cuz. I don't know how long they're gon na they're gon na leave that offer code up there. But thank you for being here, and hopefully this was helpful to you.

As always, you can email me if you have any questions or if you want to yell at me and tell me that I said something stupid. You can reach me at Brian B rya and at HVAC our school comm. Thanks, we'll see you next time.