Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums > AC Power and Grounding
stage grounding question
charles strickland:
Doing a show with temporary power from the city to a 200 amp service, The stage is a deck type ( metal frame and stairs plywood top Do I need to run my ground from the stage back to the service ground or do I run it to a rod in the ground next to the stage ? The city is grounded at the bottom of the service poll Thanks for the advice.
Keith Broughton:
The outdoor festival venue I work at requires the ground from the service to be connected to the stage frame. Ontario, Canada
charles strickland:
[ Thanks Keith.
Brian Jojade:
The reality is your local inspector gets to interpret the rules how they see fit. Ive seen both as accepted or required solutions/
Stephen Swaffer:
This goes back to the basic question of "grounding" vs "bonding". If you do not "bond" your stage to the service "ground" and just drive a ground rod, and say an extension cord gets scraped and shorts to the stage you will never trip a breaker leaving the stage energized and a resulting in a shock hazard.
In my area-and from my understanding of code the proper method would be 4 wires from the service pole to the stage, ground and neutral's kept separate after the "service disconnect" located at the pole and then "re-establishing" a ground at the stage with another grounding electrode. In this case, the "bonding"-separate ground from the pole and the "grounding" serve two distinct but important purposes. In my mind, the ground rod requirement would depend somewhat on specific conditions-dry/wet, distance from the service, etc.
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