Bonding Loop Question

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Being a weird foreign nation with more cold months than warm months, clearly they are not thinking straight....so I just feel sorry for our Canadian friends....and they pay waaaaay too much money for beer!

Hahaha, just a little nativist fun. I’m sure the Canadian authorities have their justifications for why they require the bonding loop to be hooked up to the panel grounding wire. Here in the US, that’s not how the pool code is written and I’m sure there are those in the US that have their justifications for why. Personally, my opinion is that hooking it up to the grounding system gains you nothing but potentially opens you up to transient problems. They might consider those transient problems to be insignificant. That’s their judgment call...

As for ground rod spacing, the answer is - could bear 6”, 6ft or 60ft, it all depends. A close proximity lightening strike can charge up household wiring with thousands of volts of transient electrical energy or do nothing at all. There’s really no knowing for sure when it comes to stray electrical energy which is why keeping the electrical layout as simple and compact as possible helps.
 
JoyfulNoise said:
Being a weird foreign nation with more cold months than warm months, clearly they are not thinking straight....so I just feel sorry for our Canadian friends....and they pay waaaaay too much money for beer!

Hahaha, just a little nativist fun. I’m sure the Canadian authorities have their justifications for why they require the bonding loop to be hooked up to the panel grounding wire. Here in the US, that’s not how the pool code is written and I’m sure there are those in the US that have their justifications for why. Personally, my opinion is that hooking it up to the grounding system gains you nothing but potentially opens you up to transient problems. They might consider those transient problems to be insignificant. That’s their judgment call...

As for ground rod spacing, the answer is - could bear 6”, 6ft or 60ft, it all depends. A close proximity lightening strike can charge up household wiring with thousands of volts of transient electrical energy or do nothing at all. There’s really no knowing for sure when it comes to stray electrical energy which is why keeping the electrical layout as simple and compact as possible helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help, I will be ripping up the ground rod. Also, what bonding lugs can be used to attach pigtails off of the loop and what connectors can be used to connect to rebar?
 
Update on this:

Inspector came out and said that the ground rod needs to stay in order to sign off. He also stated that the 4 points of contact around the pool with just the 1 pigtail tied into the concrete rebar grid was acceptable, if wire mesh were used then he would require 4 points around the concrete to be tied in.
 
Do what the inspector says, and then go inside and LOL at him/her. The reality is that 42" tall steel walls with steel anchors act as a far better "grounding rod" than a cute little piece of rebar driven into the earth. That is why there is no need to actually ground the bonding wire. It is literally self-grounding due to the shell of the pool.
 
Matt says it all right here.
"I have some highly technical screenroom experience (a metal box room that allows no signals in or out) and worked on some experiments that required extremely low electrical noise environments. Proper bonding and grounding of electrical and conductive components was critical to the experiments success or failure. Ground loops, ie, unintentionally constructed electrical pathways, can act as a huge antenna picking up all kinds of stray voltages. This would be particularly true in an open environment like a home or residence which is surrounded by noisy power transmission lines. A large enough closed loop circuit can act as an enormous inductor with the remote possibility that the induced currents on the ground line could cause problems with GFI/AFI circuits.

So, while none of that experience directly bears on pool construction, there is a “best practices” approach to problems and, in this instance, best practices indicates that a home should have only ONE ground point ... at the main electrical service panel. "

The OP mentions 2 ground rods in Canada. I'm not sure if that is true or not BUT if it is, then it will cause problems for just the reason Matt says in his paragraph of his first post. The last time i did electrical we were only to use One ground rod, for the reasons Matt stated. They could have gone stupid and want us to set up the possibly of "Ground loops, ie, unintentionally constructed electrical pathways, can act as a huge antenna picking up all kinds of stray voltages." AND as i read from the OP's post as do the USA inspectors. I think that is wrong and will cause stray currents.
The good thing at least about these small sometimes felt tingles are they are not enough to cause problems. Unlike throwing a toaster in the tub.
I wonder how they want the rebar bonded together. If they think a wire tied around them will do it they are dreaming.
 
I’d still add more than one connection to the decking rebar. You won’t fail code for it and you’ll get some peace of mind that the connection is unlikely to fail. Just make sure to inspect the decking work before they pour the concrete and that the copper wire to rebar connection is done with a proper clamp.

In industrial rebar work, the rebar mesh will be cald welded (thermite welding) to ensure rigid structural support. Also, a large industrial build will use various kinds of pre-tension and post-tension slab designs. That’s overkill for outdoor residential deck work but my house slab is stamped with “post tension” on the foundation so it is used in more modern home building design...
 
I have four of the Greaves beaver tooth copper lugs tied into the pool. I have also purchased the proper rebar lugs and will be doing that myself when the concrete guys shows up.

Thanks for all of your help with this, I think that I am good to go with the bonding loop and all the equipment, I'm still just concerned that he will not pass it if I remove the ground rod. The one post here says that the entire bonding grid is basically grounded anyway due to the metal supports on the pool being in the ground, so I would have to assume the rod will not hurt anything, the bonding wire is NOT connected to any service panel or ground bar in it anywhere. I guess I could always rip it out when he leaves, but i'm not trying to cause problems down the road either.
 
Is the ground rod he placed going to be accessible or will it get buried under decking? If it were accessible then you could always disconnect it in the future if you suspected that it was causing you a problem. Or, if they made it accessible by putting something like a cover around it so that the concrete was not covering it, that could also be an option. In all honesty, it’s highly unlikely to cause you any problems do you can just ignore it for the most part.
 

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