My old house’s main panel has two ground wires, one leading to pipes, another to a grounding rod. Because the bottom is the only easily-accessible side for new circuits, and because most of the knockouts are in use, I’d like to combine the two grounds into one and connect them together in a junction box in the crawlspace. I’m pretty sure there’s no code or safety issue in doing this, but I wanted to double-check.
Here’s a photo of the two ground wires. They go to two different places on the neutral/ground bus bar. I propose removing one and connecting it to the other in the crawl space. Each is run in its own flex MC conduit.
One question: any chance I could just cut away some of the flex and bond the two together, or does it need to be done in junction box?
Best Answer
No can do. Those are your Grounding Electrode System wires, and those cannot be spliced by any craft that we here possess.
Crimping them legally requires specialized kit only an electrician is going to own due to the high up-front costs.
However, they can come into a box and routed through conduit if you have the spare length and sufficient conduit cross-section, or brought in one shared knockout hole with appropriate clamp.
I see some conduit pipes with only 1 circuit in them. If able, I would install junction boxes not far below the panel, and fork circuits out of those boxes so they are fully using the capacity of the conduit entries.