Pool Bonding

[cmayba]

I'm sure this has been discussed at length, however I still haven't found the answer. I had an electrician bond the skimmer but i think its too high, dose the plate have to be completely submerged all the time? When there is a lot of activity in the pool some times the bonding plate becomes partially un-submerged.

 

[danpik]

According to the NEC code, the requirement is for 9 square inches of contact surface with the water. If you have a 6" wide plate, only 1.5" of it needs to be submerged to achieve that. There is a lot of speculation on how effective a skimmer plate is in bonding the water. I suspect that when the NEC set this requirement up there was a lot of testing done to ensure it was adequate. and I would imagine they took into consideration what the minimal amount of contact could be and adequately sized it to overcome the minimum. It is doubtful that any voltage gradient could build up quick enough during the un submerged time to cause a problem.