electrical grounding question

Copper plumbing should be grounded.

You could check the voltage difference between the copper plumbing and ground in an outlet with a multi meter.

Or simply check continuity.

Would ideally want to ground it properly using:

[link to www.homedepot.com (secure)]

:groundrod:

OP im an expert in this field you would want to cut all the pipes to your home and remove the electric. Run your home with a generator, then buy the cage or build one. dont be cheap about it either.

Last Edited by Tubbs thae vax slayer on 12/24/2018 11:01 PM

Just take a bunch of iron supplements daily and simply shove the grounding cable up your arse.

Is it galvanized steel going from the meter to the house?
Also is the copper water pipe grounded to the electrical system ground?

If so yes you can. If not you can build a counter poise ground system and bond the Faraday cage to the counter poise. A counter poise consist of 3 - 8 ft by 1/2" copper or zinc ground rods 6 ft apart in a triangle shape. Also if you can afford to install a anode to keep it from oxidizing it will make sure it stays functional for 30 years . Thermo welds ( cadwelds ) are best when connecting from hard drawn copper wire to rods.

NO, op

The copper water pipes or sewer pipes are a terrible ground

Dont do it
You're kidding yourself
This is a bad idea

Spend the effeort on a real ground

A lot of main water pipe have been replaced with plastic here plumbing contractors are required to install a new electrical grounding system when they change the main to plastic.

Isolation no chance of transit-voltage from other systems.
I would bond my cage to a driven pipe or rod and # 10 or larger cu wire isolated from everything.
All generators should be grounded to earth. Pipe or plate buried or driven rod. Ever noticed the lug on the frame?
If big bucks$$$ in electronics then hire a licensed contractor.

You know, I am fairly certain that the meter to the house is fed via galvanized pipe, the internal pipes are copper.

The place was built in 2005 and is in a city with a million building codes. I am uncertain if the copper pipes are grounded to the the electrical system here, Not sure where I could verify if it was. The hot water tank is a gas unit (if that matters)

For now I have clamped a run of about 1/4 inch insulated copper wiring from an old 30Amp feed line for a trailer. with heavy clamps (insulated with rubber) copper wiring from my cage to the copper pipe sticking out of the wall by the hot water tank.

I also wrapped my solar panel 120 watt suitcase unit in cardboard and about 6 layers of aluminum foil and aluminum tape, and have it physically touching the cage (which I am hoping is truly grounded) In the hopes that it will ground out everything to the plumbing.

Last Edited by ol' scratch on 12/25/2018 12:06 AM

Should a faraday cage be grounded?

I have been asking & researching that question for years and still have yet to find a definate answer!

One person suggested I put a faraday cage inside a faraday cage and have the outer one grounded & the inner one not grounded.

Last Edited by Mental Case on 12/25/2018 12:10 AM

I suppose it depends on what your intention is with it, amigo.

You could, it should work.

But not guaranteed like driving your own ground rod.

since you are and expert, can you explain me please how the ISS is grounded out there in space? Shouldn't there be a big discharge when a new module docks to the space station? Do they dump the building charge inside plasma dump reservoirs? I have absolutely no idea and they won't answer me on Facebook.

Thank you.

This is exactly what I have set up

This is a good start but better to follow Tempest standards like the military. The ground rod should puncture a copper sheet buried a few inches in ground and both be hard wired to faraday cage sitting above.

If you've gone to all that trouble there's no sense in taking any shortcuts.

The home depot link that was provided earlier is the way to go. I would want to keep the grounding circuit independent of all other grounding circuits especially on a Faraday Cage setup.

That would be the optimal setup for isolating your cage.

For the record I have 27 years experience as an industrial electrician/machine repairman. Most of my work involves troubleshooting the control circuits on machines. Grounding just isn't an issue very often. It's very straight forward and basic so it's not an issue for someone in my position.

Buy the grounding rod, drive it into the ground and run a 6 AWG wire to it.

It is called a ‘floating’ ground - same system that aircraft use...

If your Faraday mesh is 1.5mm square it only protects for the the particular wavelength equaling in approx 1.5-ghz.

If they use waves of 3ghz, 5ghz, 10ghz+ it goes through every Faraday cage (grounded or floating).

These cages don't protect against 5G (up to 100GHz). You need a mesh at nanometers (the fabric is virtually solid) which means you need to stay in a cage/tent in which you are unable to breathe.

I'm saying, there is no escape for what's coming.

Some people make cages with a mess that has .5" of space which allows a white band of radiowaves to traverse. This is useless.

Your cage must not have an opening. It must have 6 walls. The door must shut perfectly or overlap. Again the smallest mesh protects only for waves up to 2G. 3G and WiFi( 2.4ghz and 5ghz) are reduced but beam straight through your cage.

It's an illusion Faraday cages protect against Microwaves. Faraday cages were made in the 19th century when they experimented with VHF frequencies. You are not protected.

Then there are crazy people who think a blanket of tinfoil on a wall protects them. It just deflects energy and even harvests energy and in the worst case it will act as a conducting antenna extending the range.

If the enemy connects PEMP devices to the plumbing lines you are fucked if your cage is non-Floating and connected to the plumbing. You must have a separate grounding, 20-30" in the ground (wet soil) not connected to other electrical circuits.

If you connect your cage to the plumbing line or electrical circuit you must use a resistor of 100 Megaohms between the cage and the power to allow power dissipation and avoid energy flowback of power from leaking devices to your cage.

How to adapt to 5-100ghz? Nobody knows. These waves are stopped by concrete, even cartboard (100ghz) but there is a difference between 100mW and 2000Watt aimed at you

Multiple meshes, absorbers, conduits and inducing destructive interference. It can be done but needs to be simulated. Not really a problem these days with EM simulator softwares freely available.

Please tell me about EM simulator software. EM simulators are a hardware thing to my understanding.

Your worries are not low frequency but Microwaves. That's 3g, 4g, lte cellphone, 2.4ghz WiFi and 5G Wifi and UP.

Up= 5G cellphones. 5G is not 5Ghz but 5Generation going up to 100GHz. There is no way a Faraday cage protects you against that unless you can afford to construct a concrete bunker (preferably underground) around the cage.

One more problem: Faraday cages DO NOT protect against magnetic pulses. They even cause them to start bouncing around within the cage.

Most professional Faraday cages protect against 500mhz - 2ghz (electrical) radiowaves.

Magnetic pulses is a different subject.

no.
get a dedicated ground rod.

This

The real science behind EMP shielding is NOT Earth grounding quality. It is conductive mesh spacing. An ideal Faraday cage is a solid, highly conductive material encasement. The more wide apart the mesh shielding, the more EMF leakage is passed through. Solid copper is better than solid Aluminum, which is better than solid ferric foils.

Example: military ships electronics that are very EMP proof. There is no Earth ground.

THIS

And in oceans the water is conductive (saline) and scatters signals. Only VLF can pass through (submarine bands).

Idea:

You can hook your body up to a dedicated grounding rod with a antistatic wristband (they already have the 100m resistors).

Every feed from the breaker box NEEDS to have a green-wire ground not just a white-wire hot return (neutral). In the newer breaker boxes the Earth ground bus bar and the neutral bus bar are on opposite sides inside the box. They are shorted inside the breaker box bus the #6 (or better) to the TWO copper ground rods outside, spaced 10' apart, are both tied to the Earth ground bus bar.

The street feed only provides 2 hots and a neutral. The power company Earth Ground is the wire feeding down the pole from every pole mounted step-down transformer.

Plumbing and sewer pipe grounds are not legal because they do not have proven quality as DESIGNED grounding systems all have. Maybe they works a little, maybe a lot. Death by electrical shock is a lot.

Yep. The metal pipes are supposed to be "bonded"
(Electrically connected) to the "grounding system"
(think: Ground rod).
The pipes are not a good nor legal grounding system.

Whether needed for your Faraday cage or not is a
separate issue.