Pro tip: I was grounding water heaters wrong for years

I was at a job site in Austin last month and the inspector pointed out my grounding wire was wrapped around the cold water pipe instead of being bonded to both the hot and cold. Turns out I've been doing it that way since I started 6 years ago and nobody ever caught it. Has anyone else had a basic code rule they somehow missed for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

wood.faith5d ago

Overthinking it - the inspector just wanted to see something shiny.

jakejones5d ago

Hold on a second. Grounding goes to the cold water line because that's the bonded electrode. Hot water lines don't go into the ground, they loop back to the water heater. You don't bond to both unless there's a dielectric union or something in between. The inspector might have been looking at a bonding requirement, not the main grounding. Different codes for different things. Six years ago you were probably fine depending on the setup.

avery_ross5d ago

Wait, doesn't the 2020 NEC actually require bonding between the hot and cold pipes because they're separate metallic systems that could become energized? I've read that section differently since we got dinged on it last spring.