ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area "AHJ" says grounding elctrode conductor to long.

George.
thanks for your post.
ya the length of conductor is not in the ground. It runs through the house to the water pipe and rods.

ya the code is silent on the lenth of conductor but not the size.
So if the code is silent on the length how can the AHJ infoce it?

That is why they call it AHJ, because they have the last word on it. Hell there are parts of the country still working on 1999 code because their AHJ didn't adopt the 2002.

I would ask the AHJ to give me a quote reference for the NEC bieng enforced in your area. Unless there is a legally adopted local code requirement, he cannot ask for some thing that is not code.
As was noted above the ground rods do not help the circuit breaker trip in a fault condition.

why don't ground rods help?
if it's less then 25 ohms it's all good right.
if you drive two no need to test for 25
and that could meen you still might have more?

bucketman -

"why don't ground rods help?"...because ground rods are for directing lightning strikes and high voltage line surges (Poco problems) to ground...this current is not part of your circuit wiring and thus does not pass through your circuit breaker.

Another point - if you look at Table 8, it shows the resistance on a #4 conductor over a distant of 1,000 feet to be .508! ....that's .0508 for 100 ft....do the arithmetic...this resistance is so low as to have NO affect on a lightning strike going to earth.