Electrical Grounding – How to Properly Ground Wires

electricallighting

I’m replacing the light switches and plugs in my new house and noticed that all the light switches so far have the ground wires screwed to the back of the outlet box. Is this good enough that I don’t need a ground wire attached to the switches or do I need to pigtail the switches to these as well?

What is the proper method of this? There’s not a lot of slack coming in from the wires if I need to pigtail them.

As an FYI, the switch below has one for the light and one for the ceiling fan.

outlet box

Best Answer

You're fine, no need to make any changes here

Switches are permitted to ground through their yokes by NEC 404.9(B):

(B) Grounding. Snap switches, including dimmer and similar control switches, shall be connected to an equipment grounding conductor and shall provide a means to connect metal faceplates to the equipment grounding conductor, whether or not a metal faceplate is installed. Metal faceplates shall be grounded. Snap switches shall be considered to be part of an effective ground-fault current path if either of the following conditions is met:

(1) The switch is mounted with metal screws to a metal box or metal cover that is connected to an equipment grounding conductor or to a nonmetallic box with integral means for connecting to an equipment grounding conductor.

(2) An equipment grounding conductor or equipment bonding jumper is connected to an equipment grounding termination of the snap switch.

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