Does your pool need to be bonded to add a SWG?

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haybird

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Mar 29, 2007
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Ontario
Hello,
I can't be sure my pool was bonded when built. I assume I would see a copper wire somewhere near the equipment.

My question is, does your pool have to be bonded to install a SWG? The pool store guy said it did so my equipment and pannels don't rust. Equipment maybe but my pannel walls? They don't even get touched by the water do they?

Any insight would be helpful?
Thanks
 
There is a bonding lug on most all pool pumps. A large, bare copper wire should be attached to it and travel underground to the pool ladders, rails, decking, etc. (where you likely would not be able to see it). If you don't have that large copper wire attached to your pump, I doubt your pool is bonded.
 
In all actuality any metal near or in your pool should be bonded, SWG or not! Electrical bonding is for personal protection and should be done on all pools. If it were me I'd have it checked for bonding whether I were adding an SWG or not.

At some point everything around the pool touches water. Think about it this way, you have a plastic bowl (pool) full of water and it has an electrical wire in it (short at the pump, etc.) and you're standing in or near the water. Now everything's ok until you either are in the water and touch something outside or you're outside and touch the water. Then you get shocked. If it were properly bonded, you'd trip the breaker before anyone got hurt.

Sorry to be so long winded about this but I think it's important for people to understand that it's more important to personal safety than just keeping your metals from corroding.
 
Safety issues are much more important than the rather small corrosion risk. Any permanently installed pool should be bonded, with or without a SWG. The only SWG I know of designed to work without bonding is the Intex unit. They get around the safety issues by requiring that the unit only be running when no one is in the pool.
 
Bonding and grounding are superficially similar but serve completely different functions. Bonding means connecting all of the metal/conductive parts of the swimming pool together so that there can never be a voltage difference between any two parts. While it is fairly common for the bonding system to be grounded, this is incidental and not required for bonding to serve it's purpose.
 
I didn't know about bonding till after the build. I don't remember seeing any #8 wire around the pool or equipment however I wasn't looking for it either. I had an electrician hook up my pool shed and equipment and he never mentioned anything about bonding. If it was bonded would I see a wire somewhere near the equipment?

Is it possible to bond an existing pool without digging all the way around it, and exsposing the frame, ladder ect? We didn't need any inspections during the build, just a permit before to build.

Thanks for the information.
 
haybird is in Canada, and the rules are different there. In Canada, grounding of the bond wire is required.

I don't believe it is necessary, but obviously there are some who do or it wouldn't be code there.
The sides of the argument basically boil down to "Grounded is safer against a lightning strike while swimmers are in the pool" and "Not grounded is safer in the event of the earth being energized by a power line in the area of the pool, so get the heck out of the pool if there are storms nearby."

Normally the only place you'd see a bond wire on a completed pool is at the pump where the wire connects to the pump's bonding lug, or where that same wire connects to the grounding electrode on a Canadian install.

I don't know of any easy way to bond an existing pool with a concrete deck.
 

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Atricle 680 (Swimming Pools) was added to NFPA 70 (NEC) in 1962.

680-8 dealt with grounding and bonding.
It was renumbered in 1975 to 680-22 and renamed Bonding.
In 2002 it was renumbered again to 680-26.
In 2005 it was renamed again to Equipotential Bonding and major changes made to the body.

Looking at all that, I'd have to say about 1963. Realizing that not all governing bodies adopted the NEC it was probably later than that for a lot of places.
 
shay1208 said:
Does anyone know when inground pools were required to be bonded in the US?
Click to expand...

That's hard to say. NEC isn't the law unless it is adopted by local ordinance, so different versions apply in different areas of the country. The 1962 NEC first added swimming pool requirements, and it required all metal parts to be grounded and connected together. In 1975, the concept of bonding without grounding was introduced. In 1984, a clarification was added to indicate that a ground was not supposed to be part of the bonding system.

The wiring should be there on any pool built after a version of the NEC for 1962 or later was adopted locally. It's termination may be slightly different.

ETA: Dangit Bama! All that typing and you finished before me. :( At least we said basically the same thing.
 
No, it doesn't need to be a loop. everything just needs to be tied together. However there are specific connectors made for splicing bonding grids. I'd recommend you using one of them to tie the new #8 wire to the existing one.
 
Bama Rambler said:
No, it doesn't need to be a loop. everything just needs to be tied together. However there are specific connectors made for splicing bonding grids. I'd recommend you using one of them to tie the new #8 wire to the existing one.
Click to expand...


Does Home Depot commonly sell these things?
 
Well I have been thinking of trying a SWG myself. I know my pump and heater are grounded to a long rod under ground but I know my pool is not bonded. Its an AB pool and really the only metal is the walls themselves. What would I need to do if anything to make the switch over to SWG as far as bonding?
 
There are two classes of above ground pools. If the pool is put up and taken down seasonally, it is simplest to use the pump and SWG only when no one is in the pool and not bother with bonding. If the pool is left up over the winter, you should bond it properly.
 

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