[RE-wrenches] bare tinned solid copper

[August Goers]

Phil,

The inspector wants to see #2 tinned copper for equipment ground in exposed areas? Or is he referring to the grounding electrode conductor? This kind of stuff gets mixed up all the time in my neck of the woods...

-August



August Goers


Luminalt Energy Corporation
O: 415.564.7652
M: 415.559.1525
F: 650.244.9167
www.luminalt.com<http://www.luminalt.com/>

________________________________
From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org [re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Phil Schneider [phil at creativeenergies.biz]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 8:24 AM
To: RE-wrenches
Subject: [RE-wrenches] bare tinned solid copper

Wrenches,

We are working through submittal steps for a 75 kW ground mounted array.  The array is split into 8 subarrays.  There is a combiner or junction box at each subarray, with a ground rod spec'd at each subarray, underneath the "box station", with a bare stranded #6 from an equipment grounding bus to the rod, and equipment grounding conductors through conduit between a ground bus in each box.  15A fuses in combiners, and 100A fuses at inverter.

The engineer we're working with to stamp the plans wants to see bare, tinned, solid copper anywhere this equipment ground is in the elements, and wants to see #2 (!) bare, tinned, solid copper cadwelded and direct-buried between all 8 rods and back to the existing AC grounding electrode system.  He says this is the standard (from telecom, I'm afraid) to ensure that all the rods are at the same potential.  No Code reference, and I don't see anything in article 250 along these lines.  Hard to convince him that #6, untinned, across the board is adequate.

In the end, we'll probably go ahead and do it because it is relatively low cost and we want a good relationship here, but I'm wondering if anybody else out there is using bare tinned copper in this type of application, and I'd like more info on this to make a better argument next time.

Phil

Phil Schneider
Creative Energies

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