Do above ground pools need to be bonded?
- Thread starter gayler
- Start date
My thinking is it doesn't require bonding by local codes, being that it wouldn't be considered permanent like a steel walled AGP.
You wouldn't be able to bond the walls of the pool being it's made of vinyl. You could bond the water using a water bonder and run your copper wire to the pump if it had bonding lug on the pump. I don't think intex pumps have a bonding lug on them. Regular AGP pumps have a bonding lug on them.
I've never seen on the forum an intex owner bonding the pool or water.
You wouldn't be able to bond the walls of the pool being it's made of vinyl. You could bond the water using a water bonder and run your copper wire to the pump if it had bonding lug on the pump. I don't think intex pumps have a bonding lug on them. Regular AGP pumps have a bonding lug on them.
I've never seen on the forum an intex owner bonding the pool or water.
Thanks! My wife bought a new pump and sand filter last fall the replace the one that came with the pool. It has a bonding lug on the pump. It also says not for use with above ground pools, but not why.
Bonding rules are different for permanent pools and temporary pools. Where the line between those two falls varies from place to place. Permanent pools need to be bonded, temporary pools do not. Most Intex pools are considered temporary, but a few of the larger ones are counted as permanent in some places.
The NEC has never really addressed this as well as they should have. They only speak to temporary vs permanent. They do not set any guidelines as to what constitutes temporary. With that most jurisdictions/inspectors consider the intex type pools to be temporary. However, because it is temporary the problems associated with voltage gradients do not go away. The lack bonding of the ground around the pool to the water is usually the biggest problem and can be as much of a problem with an Intex as it can be with a permanent pool. Properly bonded, you would have at least a waterbug in the skimmer connected to the pump and a perimeter loop around the pool to bring everything into the same potential.
