I have a question about UFER grounds and the concrete in general. Is the concrete itself conductive to Earth? It must be, right? If you are bonding to the rebar, and the rebar is incased in the concrete, and the concrete is in contact with the earth. Then it would seem that the concrete itself must be part of the path to ground. Now to my dilemma. Yesterday I arrived on a job to put a stub into a basement wall. It?s the concrete insulated forms so I just need to stub a conduit through the block wall. At this time I was going to bond a piece of copper to the horizontal rebar and bring it through the wall for a UFER Ground. As I looked down into the wall, I noticed that the rebar that was stubbed up during the footer pour was not tied to any of the verticals in the wall. I asked the builder if any of the rebar in the wall itself was tied to any of the rebar stubs that came out of the footer. He said, it was not needed, and called it proximity placement. Evidently from what he told me, you don?t actually need to tie the vertical run going up the wall to the vertical coming out of the footer as long as they are so close. Anyhow, I don?t have any actual rebar bonding in my wall that bonds to the bar in the footer. And to make it a little more complicated, the horizontals around the walls are not tied to the verts going down.
So if my reinforcing bars are not bonded at all but are 20? long, but not near the bottom of concrete foundation, would this still be a good ground? I am sorry this is so long winded, but the real question is this. If you bond to a horizontal piece of bar that is up 8? on a concrete wall, and that bar is only using the concrete as its grounding path, it surely can?t be a good ground, correct? But, in the same line of thinking, your rebar that you bond in a footer is not in direct contact either, it using the concrete as a path, so it would be great to understand completely what is going on.
Thanks!
So if my reinforcing bars are not bonded at all but are 20? long, but not near the bottom of concrete foundation, would this still be a good ground? I am sorry this is so long winded, but the real question is this. If you bond to a horizontal piece of bar that is up 8? on a concrete wall, and that bar is only using the concrete as its grounding path, it surely can?t be a good ground, correct? But, in the same line of thinking, your rebar that you bond in a footer is not in direct contact either, it using the concrete as a path, so it would be great to understand completely what is going on.
Thanks!