DirecTV dish grounded to meter lug--proper grounding?

[raoul5788]

There is no IF here. That type of ground meets the specifications of both Directv and Dish.
NO..Local codes CANNOT supersede the NEC. A local ordinance may have in it an additional requirement to a particular code, but MAY NOT supersede or undermine the NEC. That is why there is a NATIONAL code.
You are NOT accurate here.

I did this stuff for 12 years. I held all required certifications and have forgotten more about this stuff than you'll ever know.
You should stand down now.

If it meets national codes that's good, but that doesn't mean a local code can't require more.

 

[dishcomm]

The NEC is implemented locally, and variations are not uncommon.


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Correct. Local codes may not replace or undermine the national code.
In other words. The NEC is the standard. The local code may require additional measures that exceed the national code.
For example. State or national building codes do not require 'hurricane clips' in the roofing structure where rafters tie into the wall framing. Local codes in certain areas require them.

 

[raoul5788]

There is no IF here. That type of ground meets the specifications of both Directv and Dish.
NO..Local codes CANNOT supersede the NEC. A local ordinance may have in it an additional requirement to a particular code, but MAY NOT supersede or undermine the NEC. That is why there is a NATIONAL code.
You are NOT accurate here.

I did this stuff for 12 years. I held all required certifications and have forgotten more about this stuff than you'll ever know.
You should stand down now.

Correct. Local codes may not replace or undermine the national code.
In other words. The NEC is the standard. The local code may require additional measures that exceed the national code.
For example. State or national building codes do not require 'hurricane clips' in the roofing structure where rafters tie into the wall framing. Local codes in certain areas require them.

Correct. Local codes may not replace or undermine the national code.
In other words. The NEC is the standard. The local code may require additional measures that exceed the national code.
For example. State or national building codes do not require 'hurricane clips' in the roofing structure where rafters tie into the wall framing. Local codes in certain areas require them.

Local code requiring more than the national is what I have been saying all along. It seems like you agree with me.

 

[dishcomm]

Local code requiring more than the national is what I have been saying all along. It seems like you agree with me.

Here's the rub. Unless the locality requires permitting per local code before the work is done, the national code takes precedence.
As long as the work meets the national code, it is to code.
Now, the local code MUST be in writing and available to contractors and the general public.

 

[Hutch1814]

I'm not really sure why we're arguing this. We have ALL accepted it as code. No reason to go in depth this much, the OP's question was answered. I respect both of you, your views, and what you both bring to the table but this seems to be getting heated. Why can't we all just get along?

 

[raoul5788]

Thanks Hutch. No problem here, I think we both are saying the same thing, it just took a while to get there!

 

[AntAltMike]

According to the 2011 NEC and all previous versions in the DBS satellite era, the antenna MAST must be grounded to an 8 foot ground rod, which in turn must be bonded to the building's ground electrode system, so technically, piggybacking off the coax outer conductor ground does not meet any existing version of the code. Nevertheless, I think that just about everybody uses the shortcut of running the 17 gauge copper clas steel wire to the coax ground block (I do it all the time) and figures that the ground path is completed by the 10 gauge coax outer conductor ground connection which can go to the meter box, but doing that doesn't meet the code requirement for mast grounding.

FYI, I have seen the proposed 2014 version of the NEC, and it proposes getting rid of the requirement of grounding the mast of any antenna that has a diameter of less than three feet!

 

[twizt3dsist3r]

According to the 2011 NEC and all previous versions in the DBS satellite era, the antenna MAST must be grounded to an 8 foot ground rod, which in turn must be bonded to the building's ground electrode system, so technically, piggybacking off the coax outer conductor ground does not meet any existing version of the code. Nevertheless, I think that just about everybody uses the shortcut of running the 17 gauge copper clas steel wire to the coax ground block (I do it all the time) and figures that the ground path is completed by the 10 gauge coax outer conductor ground connection which can go to the meter box, but doing that doesn't meet the code requirement for mast grounding.

FYI, I have seen the proposed 2014 version of the NEC, and it proposes getting rid of the requirement of grounding the mast of any antenna that has a diameter of less than three feet!

Lets reword it this way....

Techs ground to the standards their supervisors instruct them to, the above posted one of which deemed acceptable.

 

[AntAltMike]

If the current, proposed 2014 NEC is kept in its present form and adopted, satellite dishes smaller in diameter than 3 feet and off-air antennas less than 3 feet wide will not have to have their masts grounded. I consider the latter exclusion to be remarkable, because a channel 7-51 antenna will typically be less than 3 feet wide but might have a boom length several times that measure and will be a rather inviting target for lightning.

The "best" ground for an antenna mast or coax outer conductor, from a purely technical standpoint, that you can ever have is a connection to a copper cold water pipe that is continuously metallic all the way to where it enters the building and bonded to the building's ground electrode system, but that has been excluded for such use by the NEC since 2002.

 

[AntAltMike]

The term "National Electrical Code" is a misnomer, since it is only a model code. It has no legal force whatsoever, beyond what it is given by jurisdictions that adopt it, in whole or in part.

 

[dishcomm]

The term "National Electrical Code" is a misnomer, since it is only a model code. It has no legal force whatsoever, beyond what it is given by jurisdictions that adopt it, in whole or in part.

I beg to differ. The NEC as with other Codes, is a standard of uniform practice. Therefore, in the instance of a legal action, if the job adheres to the Code, it in fact would stand up to legal action.
For example. Let's say an electrician installs a lighting system. He adheres to NEC. The job passes inspection by the local code enforcement officer. A few months later, the wiring causes a fire in the home. The homeowners insurance company, seeking to mitigate it's exposure directs a subrogation action against the electrician's insurance company. That company checks into the the work, finds that the job was done properly to NEC and an inspection certificate approving the work is on file. The electrician's insurance carrier denies the claim.

 

[Jimbo]

I beg to differ. The NEC as with other Codes, is a standard of uniform practice. Therefore, in the instance of a legal action, if the job adheres to the Code, it in fact would stand up to legal action.
For example. Let's say an electrician installs a lighting system. He adheres to NEC. The job passes inspection by the local code enforcement officer. A few months later, the wiring causes a fire in the home. The homeowners insurance company, seeking to mitigate it's exposure directs a subrogation action against the electrician's insurance company. That company checks into the the work, finds that the job was done properly to NEC and an inspection certificate approving the work is on file. The electrician's insurance carrier denies the claim.

So, in this case, if it is found that the wiring started the fire and the work was done properly, who pays the claim ?
Customer isn't just left out in the cold, are they ?

 

[Liquidforce88]

So, in this case, if it is found that the wiring started the fire and the work was done properly, who pays the claim ?
Customer isn't just left out in the cold, are they ?

No the home owners insurance is still on the hook. The home owners insurance is just looking to pass the buck.

 

[dishcomm]

So, in this case, if it is found that the wiring started the fire and the work was done properly, who pays the claim ?
Customer isn't just left out in the cold, are they ?

The insurance carrier would most likely have their people examine the wire for manufacturer's defects. If found the carrier would then seek to recover from the company that made the wire.
Here's an example.
Two years ago I did a mitigation on a fire claim.
The air handler is in the attic of this one story house.
There is a gas line made with this yellow flex pipe. It's all over the place here. Anyway, while these people were out, the pipe leaked and caused a fire to ignite. We ended up gutting most of the house mostly due to smoke damage. Two thirds of the roof was destroyed.
The carrier went after the manufacturer of the gas pipe. I spoke to the adjuster on the job. He told me this pipe had a history of defects. The claim for all damages was paid by the insurance company for the pipe maker.

 

[dishcomm]

No the home owners insurance is still on the hook. The home owners insurance is just looking to pass the buck.

Actually it is a process known as 'subrogation'...Insurance companies use this process to mitigate their exposure to a loss.
In other words, if there is someone else to blame, they will attempt to recover from them.

 

[AntAltMike]

Compliance with the model NEC is of no legal force by itself, but can be of evidentiary value to prove that a defendant used reasonable care in attempting to mitigate fire and safety hazards. To be evidence at trial, it would have to be presented by an expert witness. But noncompliance is not in itself evidence and is rebuttable. For example, until 2002, you could ground to a cold water pipe, but that practice has since been limited to the first five feet from where the cold water pipe enters the building. The change was not made because of engineering analysis showed that a six foot length to a copper pipe connection point was arbitrarily inferior at serving as a high current ground path than was a five foot path, but rather, was a practical accommodation to the reality that more and more households were repairing copper pipe with plastic parts and so a perfectly valid ground path might get unwittingly disrupted in the future. If a witness then testified that the plumbing was metallic and substantially intact from the connection point and back to the grounding electrode and the point at which it entered the building, then the non-conforming ground connection would have afforded the same protection as a conforming one.

In fact, under the 2002 code, connection to a commercial building's cold water pipe could still be made anywhere over its length provided the plumbing was professionally maintained and substantially exposed, but while an antenna coax grounded to a point on a copper water pipe more than five feet from where it enters a building is not grounded according to code, any testifying electrical inspector or physicist would convincingly argue not only that a connection to the copper pipe six feet from where it enters a building is reasonable care to minimize safety hazards, that witness could bolster his own testimony by citing the pre-2002 codes for having permitted that practice.

In the hundreds of grounding liability threads I've participated in over the years, I still have never seen one single documented instance of an antenna installer being held liable for fire or safety damage, though the specter of such a suit may have, in some extreme case, been a consideration of pre-trial settlement. I personally walked into a situation at the old British Embassy where failure to ground a mast contributed to that mast becoming electrically hot (solid, low resistance path to 110 volts) and I was the repair person who discovered that non-compliance when I touched that mast and experienced a heavy sensation that was not the kind of static shock or light tingle that I have often experienced when touching a few other ungrounded masts previously, and am alive today only because a 20 amp breaker was tripped by the ground wire I was attempting to attach to bring it into code compliance. If I had held the hot bare 10 gauge copper ground wire in one hand and the cold water pipe in the other, as I was just minutes away from doing. I might have been killed, and that would have been an interesting suit, because an electrician has swapped a white and black wire in a grounded outlet, and then someone has disconnected the green ground wire on the outlet, surely because the receiver must have tripped that 20 amp breaker when plugged in by a previous technician, and there also had to be a failure in the HTS receiver that allowed the hot side of the isolation transformer input to contact the case, which then completed a path to the coax outer conductor. And I arguably had committed contributory negligence by not definitely analyzing the nature of the cause of the sensation I had experienced that initiated this grounding, and maybe, in light of that, I should have been wearing gloves. If my estate or employer had tried to make a claim based on damages caused to me by that unlikely comedy of errors, only the lawyers would have made any money.

I have read of the NEC being abused by employers to screw their installers. The NEC is not designed to mitigate damage to electronic components, but when a customer has a component failure and sees that the system is not grounded, there have been instances of the installation contractor making "good" to the complaining customer and then taking the cost of doing so out of the sub contractor if his installation didn't meet the letter of the NEC. Of course, the sub contractor could well prevail in a suit against the contractor, but the cost of doing so would be prohibitive and would include losing his job.

 

[dishcomm]

Compliance with the model NEC is of no legal force by itself, but can be of evidentiary value to prove that a defendant used reasonable care in attempting to mitigate fire and safety hazards. To be evidence at trial, it would have to be presented by an expert witness. But noncompliance is not in itself evidence and is rebuttable. For example, until 2002, you could ground to a cold water pipe. Then that practice was limited to the first five feet from where it enters the building. The change was not made because of engineering analysis showed that a six foot length to a copper pipe connection point was arbitrarily inferior at serving as a high current ground path than was a five foot path, but rather, was a practical accommodation to the reality that more and more households were repairing copper pipe with plastic parts and so a perfectly valid ground path might get unwittingly disrupted in the future. If a witness then testified that the plumbing was metallic and substantially intact from the connection point and back to the grounding electrode and the point at which it entered the building, then the non-conforming ground connection would have afforded the same protection as a conforming one.

In fact, under the 2002 code, connection to a commercial building's cold water pipe could still be made anywhere over its length provided the plumbing was professionally maintained and substantially exposed, an antenna coax grounded to a point on a copper water pipe more than five feet from where it enters a building is not grounded according to code, any testifying electrical inspector or physicist would convincingly argue not only that a connection to the copper pipe six feet from where it enters a building is reasonable care to minimize safety hazards, that witness could bolster his own testimony by citing the pre-2002 codes for having permitted that practice.

In the hundreds of grounding liability threads I've participated in over the years, I still have never seen one single documented instance of an antenna installer being held liable for fire or safety damage, though the specter of such a suit may have, in some extreme case, been a consideration of pre-trial settlement. I personally walked into a situation at the old British Embassy where failure to ground a mast contributed to that mast becoming electrically hot (solid, low resistance path to 110 volts) and I was the repair person who discovered that non-compliance when I touched that mast and experienced a heavy sensation that was not the kind of static shock or light tingle that I have often experienced when touching a few other ungrounded masts previously, and am alive today only because a 20 amp breaker was tripped by the ground wire I was attempting to attach to bring it into code compliance. If I had held the hot bare 10 gauge coper ground wire in one hand and the cold water pipe in the other, as I was just minutes away from going. I might have been killed, and that would have been an interesting suit, because an electrician has swapped a white and black wire in a grounded outlet, and then someone has disconnected the green ground wire on the outlet, because the receiver must have tripped that 20 amp breaker when plugged in by a previous technician, and there also had to be a failure in the HTS receiver that allowed the hot side of the isolation transformer input to contact the case, which then completed a path to the coax outer conductor. And I arguably had committed contributory negligence by not definitely analyzing the nature of the cause of the sensation I had experienced that initiated this grounding, and maybe, in light of that, I should have been wearing gloves. If my estate or employer had tried to make a claim based on damages caused to me by that unlikely comedy of errors, only the lawyers would have made any money.

I have read of the NEC being abused by employers to screw their installers. The NEC is not designed to mitigate damage to electronic components, but when a customer has a component failure and sees that the system is not grounded, there have been instances of the installation contractor making "good" to the complaining customer and then taking the cost of doing so out of the sub contractor if his installation didn't meet the letter of the NEC. Of course, the sub contractor could well prevail in a suit against the contractor, but the cost of doing so would be prohibitive and would include losing his job.

re these your words? Or is this a C&P from a link? If so, please provide the link to the material posted above.
As a matter of fact, I think it's a rule around here.
I would like to see the link for informational purposes.
Thanks.

 

[AntAltMike]

Are these your words? Or is this a C&P from a link? If so, please provide the link to the material posted above.
As a matter of fact, I think it's a rule around here....

I am surely the only person here who nearly electrocuted himself in the ceiling of the old British Embassy and may have described the experience in more detail here years ago, when my recollections were more precise, so any links to references in any of my contemporary posts on grounding would be have to be to my earlier posts, as this subject did get talked to death in the DBS forums a decade or so ago.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia's anonymously authored, introductory paragraph on the NEC, with which I am in agreement (of course, if I wasn't in agreement with it, I could change it to my liking, as can any of you):

The National Electrical Code (NEC), or NFPA 70, is a regionally adoptable standard for the safe installation of electrical wiring and equipment in the United States. The NEC, while having no legally binding regulation as written, can be and often is adopted by states, municipalities and cities in an effort to standardize their enforcement of safe electrical practices within their respective jurisdiction.

This map from the NEMA website, showing which edition of "The NEC" is currently adopted in each state.

Note that Connecticut has not adopted any versions more current than the 2005 one. Does anyone remember which edition changed the coax outer conductor grounding requirement to be a "static discharge device" without bothering to define it? Was that 2008 or 2005?

The Wikipedia entry adds:

In some cases, the NEC is amended, altered and may even be rejected in lieu of regional regulations as voted on by the governing bodies of any given locale.

I have previously explored the statutory incorporation of the NEC in four states. In one state, they replaced the standards for temporary electrical service at construction sites. The temporary electrical systems in such sites are often moved around and consist of live cables laying on the ground and running through puddles. Some of the changes could be said to be more lax than the standards they replaced. Whether other changes would be more or less lax would be subjective.

To characterize adherence to "the NEC" as a practice that is universally recognized as reasonable care to avoid shock and fire hazard is to pass judgement on the sufficiency of the regulations of each and every jurisdiction that has not passed the most current or stringent edition of that code.