Wiring – Ground wire from the junction box

groundjunction-boxwiring

Background: I am a regular DIYer just starting out. My question is regarding the ground wire while installing a chandelier. I have just moved to a new location in Ontario, Canada. The house was built in 1999.

This is a picture of the previous installation of the fixture onto the junction box.
enter image description here

Observation: The ground coming out of the previous fixture was connected to the green nut on the bracket. However, in the pic above, the ground from the supply is visible in the junction box but isn't connected to the green nut.

I installed the chandelier the same way. It works.
enter image description here

Concerns:

  1. Is it safe to assume that the installation is safely grounded because the fixture ground wire is connected to the green nut on the bracket which in turn is connected to a grounded junction box?

  2. If the junction box is indeed grounded, is it normal for the ground wire to be visible in such a manner?

  3. If the junction box isn't grounded, should I pull down that ground, connect it to the fixture's ground and then connect an external copper piece to the other 2 grounds and finally the external ground to the green nut? Research indicates that the green nut has place for just 1 wire.

Thanks for reading.

Best Answer

The green screw firmly grounds the lamp to the mounting bracket. You are asking "How does the mounting bracket ground itself to the steel junction box? Does only metal-metal contact suffice, or does it need to be wired also?"

Yes, metal-metal contact between parts is acceptable grounding if all these are true:

  • the mounting bracket is bottomed out "hard" against the metal junction box (not dangling by the screws or floating on drywall ears, as is usually the case with receptacles and switches)
  • and both are clean bare metal (not contaminated with paint, rust etc.)
  • and there are no insulators in the way (those little squares that outlets use to capture screws).

Unless there are any of those little screw-capture squares that I can't see, both your old bracket and your new one look like valid grounding paths to me.

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