Bad Ground Rod

In this article I’m going over the grounding system for your home. The escape route for your electrical system over-voltages is your grounding system. Your surge protection does the best job it can do to divert over voltages to ground but it is up to you to make sure over voltages have a good path to the ground.

Most likely we all want our smart phones and computers to be safe. We use surge protectors and surge protected power strips to move over voltages off of our power supply and on to the homes grounding system. Therefore it is important to maintain a good grounding system.

Taking the time to check your ground wire is intact and connected is a good part of your homeowner maintenance. Home grounding systems can come in a few different forms such as a ground plate, ground rods, ground ring, cold water ground or a Ufer ground (building steal).

Most homes use the main cold water pipe coming into the house and a supplemental ground rod as the main grounding system. In SW Florida we have transitioned over to the Ufer grounding system (building steal) since early 2000. Homes older than that are most likely running on an old worn-out ground rod.

When the grounding system is made up of old ground rods and a copper plumbing pipe (if you live is south Florida your plumbing has hopefully been changed to CPVC by now) the ground rods are decayed and out of service. Ground rods have a lifespan of between 15 and 25 years. If yours looks like this one it is older than 30 years.

If you have any questions on the article above feel free to drop me an email. If you live inside my service area give me a call and I’ll swing by and give you a free evaluation of your grounding system.

Call Batista Electric 239-850-5007 so we can fix this problem.