A thread on the British IEE Forum is talking about grounding arrangements to a detached garage. As some of you are aware, we do things rather differently over here!
One poster is comparing British practice with the American NEC, but as far as I can tell he's got his facts rather distorted.
So, can one of our NEC-experts confirm that I have the right interpretation here please?
As I understand it, you have two ways to feed a detached building and be code compliant:
#1. Run a 3-wire feeder, bond the neutral to case/ground at the garage panel, and install a ground rod.
#2. Run a 4-wire feeder, install the garage like any other sub-panel with neutral and ground separate, but a grounding electrode is still needed (obviously to the ground bar only, not the neutral).
Correct? Or am I off-base somewhere?
Edited to add:
The poster is also claiming 30mA GFI protection for the feeder, which is definitely not required, is it?
Receptacles in the garage would need normal 6mA GFI protection under 210.8 (with exceptions, e.g. inaccessible for fixed appliance).
[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 08-04-2005).]
