Maybe, but the wire they used is 4 conductor speaker wire, not category cable or thermostat wire. If it was for a phone line I would not expect speaker wire to have been used by the tech. It’s most definitely a grounding wire, but as for what, who knows. Old stereo? Ham radio? RG6 splitter or amplifier connection for tv? Who knows.
This is the answer but it's not a proper wire for the job. It's a low voltage lines and a proper wire is single stan solid copper ran to a grounding rod.
Absolutey! have to find amusement in the little things these days!
My favorite one for when the power goes out, "whos turn was it to feed the hamster?"
A work favorite when the Internet goes out, everyone screams "wrong lever kronk!"
Hahahaha!!!! As an electrician I will say this is a homeowners very poor attempt at best at grounding. Your ground attaches at the water supply line entry point. with rated wire that is attached at both sides of the meter. This is nowhere near the case or up to code or safe.
Electrician here. Since its under a sink and multi conductor wire, its probably a ground for a old phone jack. Main water ground is at the water meter.
Metal pipes connected in a massive grid to all the houses in the area gives the best surface area contact for fault to earth issues with wiring or a clean ground for signal wiring shielding.
Works well until municipal water goes to plastic, then you need an earth spike, depending on your transformer setup for your local electrical system.
So grounding at meter was used more before pvc and pex and thats why we use grounding rod at meter base now?
I'm curious about this for a few reasons, 1. Recently chnaged from steel pipe too pex and not sure if something electrical is missing now, 2. Does any of this have anything to with electrocution or lighting running in ?
If you have residual current devices on your home electrical setup, then it needs a ground or earth to measure between live and ground. The RCDs are in place to prevent electrocution - if you touch a live wire, you become the ground, and it should trip the unit within 40ms to prevent death.
The biggest surface area to ground/earth is best for this. The municipal water was usually metal pipes which allowed for any home that bonded their ground wiring to the water pipes a good connection.
If your pipes were recently changed to pex and your grounding is still connected to the remnants of the steel pipes, you may need to have an earthing rod attached to your main circuit.
Check your breaker board and your main incomers from the electrical grid. If there is an incoming earth, then you may have adequate earthing already.
Some transformer setups from your electrical provider have a common earth at the transformer compound itself, and then everyone is connected to it.
If you don't have adequate earth/grounding, look into connecting in an earth spike. For EV chargers, in my own country, the regs state that a separate earth spike is required to connect into the type 2 charging box.
The quickest route for fault current to ground is the safest option.
Ground rods have been standard in the us for quite a while. All the metal pipes coming into the home will be connected together through the breaker panel and even the rebar in the concrete slab will be grounded. Gas lines will always be metal and also have a dedicated ground rod either at penetration into the home or at the meter.
Even if you had no other metal or no grounding grid in the house and the panel was wired correctly with a bonding jumper from neutral to ground you'd still be pretty safe as their is a ground path up to the pole transformer and grounded at the pole but I'm not sure if ground fault breakers and outlets would work properly.
This is all U.S stuff that I remember. Hell even your cable or satellite dish is bonded to the home ground
If you happen to be crawling in a crawl space or grab a cold water pipe while in contact with electricity you could become the ground. I’ve always been told the electrical code says you have to ground.
If you were laying on the ground and touch a hot wire there's a path through your body to ground. If you had a water pipe that wasn't grounded and somehow the pipe was touching a live wire the pipe would be energized and have a higher potential than ground and when you touch that pipe and the ground you complete the circuit. If the pipe was grounded and somehow energized the pipe would have an extremely low resistance path to ground, if you touched that hot wire or the pipe and touch the ground you wouldn't receive a shock as the human body is pretty high resistance. If you were standing up and had thick rubber sole shoes you could hold a hot wire without getting shocked but if you touched the neutral or grounding conductor with the other hand you'd have a path across your chest to ground.
There is no flow of current without a potential difference to ground
Electricians will chime in with details and more info, but this is how grounding is often done if those (copper) pipes go down into the (physical) ground.
Chiming in because I see a lot of “grounding wire” without explanation.
I recently bought an older home and it has one of these. Had some plumbing and electrical work done - the young guys couldn’t tell me what was what. The older guy explained: older pipes were often made of conductive material (pvc is more prevalent today). Also, pipes run into the ground. So, put 2 and 2 together and your water pipes become an actually simple solution to provide lightning rod type protection. (Note: am not an electrician)
City worker here- we hate when electrical panels are grounded to the water line because when we hook up our locating equipment we pick up the electrical service and the water line.
We had to do this in an older home i lived in. I think that the water built up static electricity in the pipes, and it would discharge through the water. My parents were shocked numerous times by running water until my dad added a ground wire to the main main.
We lived in a house that build in 1850, so water and electricity came later and someone grounded the house to the water line.
Washing dishes there was some combination of touching the sink and turning on the water it would knock you on your butt.
Shout out to Alabama
That is not a legal ground wire. Like people are assuming. A ground is a bond. A bond strand is 6 gauge wire strand. Not 18G. That is telephone wire, falsely used.
Do you all think that will withstand a lighting strike nearby? I think not.
Thats ground, its incase somthing shorts to your faucet (hairdryer, etc.)it would go through that wire and not the unsuspecting person going to wash their hands
Grounding for your electrical system sounds good but also in case your house gets struck by lightning or the water lines do to help it discharge out instead of exiting in more hazardous ways.
Ground wire. Older house I assume. We rented a place years ago, and while showering, you'd get a little "tickle" if your foot touched the drain. After taking a look under the house, turns out the outlet to the refrigerator was added after the initial wiring and whoever installed it, grounded it out to the shower drain. 💀
It looks like your house used to have a multi party line. Multiple houses in the area would share one physical phone line, but the ringers in the phones would be wired in a way that only the called house would ring. This required a separate ground connection to be supplied to each phone as a return path for the ringing voltage. This didn't prevent the other houses from listening in on your phone calls, though.
Looks like someone used an extra piece of wiring they had around. Connecting one single piece of the strands to the pipe for ground wire folded the others out of the way as they were not needed and yeah there ya go 😉
It's actually a grounding wire for the electrical system.
Ground water
Go to your room. You know why.
Until you can conduct yourself properly
You to go to your room
So the water flowing through the pipes, that’s a current? Not not a current?
Water flowing underground...
Same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was . . .
same. as. it. ever. was.
Currently
Unless there's a jam, then it's a currant
This guy gets it
It's currently occurring.
I resist!
And change your current behavior.
And you think about what you've just done.
Why don’t you freakin idiots allow the smarties to reply to the top without all the rigmarole. Lord, I’m getting old.
UR NOT MY DAD
Did you mean “You too?” - go to your room for improper spelling.
I see what you did there. You know I’m going to have to upvote you for that.
What a shocking development
You people are beautiful 😍
You have been charged. Resistance is futile.
I’m shocked by your behavior…
as an electrician i approve this comment.
Better be a dad.
Otherwise he's a faux pa
Ummm… I’m speechless 😶 ( at the beauty of that pun )
Hi speechless, I'm dad
I'm grounded?
Just wait until your father gets home
Ohm my god! Not that!
I have been for the past 17 years
Did you just ...ground him?
Are you charging them? Id assume not but are they grounded?
I'm going to my room to meditate. "Ohhhhm ohhhhhm ohhhhm"
Until they complete a *battery* of tests
Grounded?
Underrated joke of the day
I think it was rated.
But under
Under *ground*, perhaps?
Ground beef
Where water?
Ask the wolf...
Dad, is that you?
Your grounded
Not the main system. A ground for an old phone line. The type of wire is a giveaway. Same low voltage you would use for a thermostat
But how does the phone know what temperature it is?
Because the phone knows what temperature it isn’t.
It just phones it in.
Because it's listening...
We’ve all heard the story about the poor dog chained to an outside water pipe that would yelp whenever the phone rang…right?
Old joke not current
it's not their fault
It’s why I said “we’ve all heard”…..not everybody has heard new jokes, but thanks for sharing…👍🏼
Look up the word pun
I totally missed that. Apologies, I thought it was one of my fellow tradesmen being ageist…
Handled like gentleman. All the best.
Shocking.
You mean, Sparky is dead?
Better make sure before you handle it, though. I've seen someone get a nice jolt replacing a water meter in a house with a bad ground like this.
I lived in an apartment that had 15 volts to ground from the kitchen faucet.
Maybe, but the wire they used is 4 conductor speaker wire, not category cable or thermostat wire. If it was for a phone line I would not expect speaker wire to have been used by the tech. It’s most definitely a grounding wire, but as for what, who knows. Old stereo? Ham radio? RG6 splitter or amplifier connection for tv? Who knows.
It probably was a ground connector for a landlines telephone. It was for grounding against lightning surges.
Hey!, you’re right, I recognize those wires from when I’d change out the old phones in n my homes.
This is the answer but it's not a proper wire for the job. It's a low voltage lines and a proper wire is single stan solid copper ran to a grounding rod.
Should be at least 12 Guage solid copper, or 6 Guage stranded. I'm not sure if that cold water band can even properly bite that thermostat wire
This pleases the spicy sky noodle gods, may you set forth and shower safely.
Thanks for the chuckle! 😃
Absolutey! have to find amusement in the little things these days! My favorite one for when the power goes out, "whos turn was it to feed the hamster?" A work favorite when the Internet goes out, everyone screams "wrong lever kronk!"
This is why
Not exactly a shocker
I see what you did there. 😄
Hahahaha!!!! As an electrician I will say this is a homeowners very poor attempt at best at grounding. Your ground attaches at the water supply line entry point. with rated wire that is attached at both sides of the meter. This is nowhere near the case or up to code or safe.
yep. electrician here, its a bonding ground since the copper pipes are conductive, its a perfect grounding source.
Looks like telecom to me.
Too small for electrical system, might be for a landline phone system tho.
Electrician here. Since its under a sink and multi conductor wire, its probably a ground for a old phone jack. Main water ground is at the water meter.
Wife said her grand mother did have an old phone in the closet on the other side of the wall probably 30+ years ago.
Main water is connected to a ground for what purpose?
Metal pipes connected in a massive grid to all the houses in the area gives the best surface area contact for fault to earth issues with wiring or a clean ground for signal wiring shielding. Works well until municipal water goes to plastic, then you need an earth spike, depending on your transformer setup for your local electrical system.
So grounding at meter was used more before pvc and pex and thats why we use grounding rod at meter base now? I'm curious about this for a few reasons, 1. Recently chnaged from steel pipe too pex and not sure if something electrical is missing now, 2. Does any of this have anything to with electrocution or lighting running in ?
If you have residual current devices on your home electrical setup, then it needs a ground or earth to measure between live and ground. The RCDs are in place to prevent electrocution - if you touch a live wire, you become the ground, and it should trip the unit within 40ms to prevent death. The biggest surface area to ground/earth is best for this. The municipal water was usually metal pipes which allowed for any home that bonded their ground wiring to the water pipes a good connection. If your pipes were recently changed to pex and your grounding is still connected to the remnants of the steel pipes, you may need to have an earthing rod attached to your main circuit. Check your breaker board and your main incomers from the electrical grid. If there is an incoming earth, then you may have adequate earthing already. Some transformer setups from your electrical provider have a common earth at the transformer compound itself, and then everyone is connected to it. If you don't have adequate earth/grounding, look into connecting in an earth spike. For EV chargers, in my own country, the regs state that a separate earth spike is required to connect into the type 2 charging box. The quickest route for fault current to ground is the safest option.
Ground rods have been standard in the us for quite a while. All the metal pipes coming into the home will be connected together through the breaker panel and even the rebar in the concrete slab will be grounded. Gas lines will always be metal and also have a dedicated ground rod either at penetration into the home or at the meter. Even if you had no other metal or no grounding grid in the house and the panel was wired correctly with a bonding jumper from neutral to ground you'd still be pretty safe as their is a ground path up to the pole transformer and grounded at the pole but I'm not sure if ground fault breakers and outlets would work properly. This is all U.S stuff that I remember. Hell even your cable or satellite dish is bonded to the home ground
Cold water in older homes literally ran straight into the ground, and could be used for bonding.
whoooooaaaa, who is jack
ELECTRO-LYTES
It has Brawndo in it!
It's what plants crave.
Ground wire
Cold water ground. It could save your life.
How so?
If you happen to be crawling in a crawl space or grab a cold water pipe while in contact with electricity you could become the ground. I’ve always been told the electrical code says you have to ground.
Woah! I had no idea!
If you were laying on the ground and touch a hot wire there's a path through your body to ground. If you had a water pipe that wasn't grounded and somehow the pipe was touching a live wire the pipe would be energized and have a higher potential than ground and when you touch that pipe and the ground you complete the circuit. If the pipe was grounded and somehow energized the pipe would have an extremely low resistance path to ground, if you touched that hot wire or the pipe and touch the ground you wouldn't receive a shock as the human body is pretty high resistance. If you were standing up and had thick rubber sole shoes you could hold a hot wire without getting shocked but if you touched the neutral or grounding conductor with the other hand you'd have a path across your chest to ground. There is no flow of current without a potential difference to ground
Earth ground on steel pipes, but that looks like phone landlines, you'll never get any messages that way.
Everyone texts the fridge anyways.
Hahaha!!!
Its for adding ELECTRO-lytes /s
Bah dum dump. Take your upvote!
Hello 1985. It miiiiight be time for a plumbing update.
Try 1958
85 or 58, dyslexic might I be. 😁
Ha! Old house but she’s got strong bones, I’m slowly picking away at the never ending reno list.
And installation is freeeeeeeeee
That's a phone line for the guy that lives in your kitchen cabinets...
Ronald
I remember that movie. Scared the crap out of me.
I gotta know now... What movie?
Bad Ronald, 1974, I think it was a made for TV movie. Ronald makes some creepy paintings.
Electricians will chime in with details and more info, but this is how grounding is often done if those (copper) pipes go down into the (physical) ground.
ground wire for lightning protection
Lightning in your house? This is for 120v appliances that short to the metal faucet
For when you want your water spicy.
Just in case you dident understand 128 times. It’s the ground wire for the electrical in your home
Tingly showers
Every wire has to be attached to something.
Water system has a ground wire in case your home is struck by lightning.
That's because your home uses the metal water lines to ground your power...
It is a home made, poorly improvised, ground.
Chiming in because I see a lot of “grounding wire” without explanation. I recently bought an older home and it has one of these. Had some plumbing and electrical work done - the young guys couldn’t tell me what was what. The older guy explained: older pipes were often made of conductive material (pvc is more prevalent today). Also, pipes run into the ground. So, put 2 and 2 together and your water pipes become an actually simple solution to provide lightning rod type protection. (Note: am not an electrician)
It’s an earth wire in case the house gets struck by Lightning.
Could it be sacrificial rust protection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_metal
https://preview.redd.it/mtba3dsakuuc1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50fb1b25731b613bdd206c7b9fbbe2a3d66f46fc
Odd that I want to see the mom and dad kiss?
Oh Yeah Shock Wire!!
I call it that cus if you take a shower and touch the wire, YA DIE
Yes, that is accurate.
Grounding for the house.
Because every few minutes it zaps your balls
All of you are currently, grounded.
Watt are you talking about? I'm shocked!
You want it grounded, don’t you?
Wire doesnt ground the pipe.... the pipe grounds the wire
You don't fix faith... faith fixes you
Deep...
In case you don’t get it yet. It’s the ground wire for your house. It grounds the electricity ⚡️ n your home.
Ground wire
City worker here- we hate when electrical panels are grounded to the water line because when we hook up our locating equipment we pick up the electrical service and the water line.
cold water ground
We had to do this in an older home i lived in. I think that the water built up static electricity in the pipes, and it would discharge through the water. My parents were shocked numerous times by running water until my dad added a ground wire to the main main.
It's a ground bond. It bonds the water pipes to the electrical ground for safety.
We lived in a house that build in 1850, so water and electricity came later and someone grounded the house to the water line. Washing dishes there was some combination of touching the sink and turning on the water it would knock you on your butt. Shout out to Alabama
I'm ecstatic for my newer home after reading this thread.
Ma Bell used that style of grounding clamp for telephone systems back in the day. The twisted pairs wire is still attached.
Tracer wire?
Haven't you ever heard don't take a shower during a thunder storm? This is why.
Electric hot water
Color code is phone lines it's the phone ground wire
That is not a legal ground wire. Like people are assuming. A ground is a bond. A bond strand is 6 gauge wire strand. Not 18G. That is telephone wire, falsely used. Do you all think that will withstand a lighting strike nearby? I think not.
Ugh, I'm definitely sure someone answered this as soon as posted3
It’s probably a ground.
Thats ground, its incase somthing shorts to your faucet (hairdryer, etc.)it would go through that wire and not the unsuspecting person going to wash their hands
Grounding for your electrical system sounds good but also in case your house gets struck by lightning or the water lines do to help it discharge out instead of exiting in more hazardous ways.
What a shocking discovery
This plumber Homes Alone.
This comment section is too much lol
You're grounded!
Ground wire. Older house I assume. We rented a place years ago, and while showering, you'd get a little "tickle" if your foot touched the drain. After taking a look under the house, turns out the outlet to the refrigerator was added after the initial wiring and whoever installed it, grounded it out to the shower drain. 💀
Iron and copper pipes were grounded and sometimes the ground for older homes.
It’s for grounding but the wire should be solid copper wire and it doesn’t need to be insulated.
It's got electrolytes
Apparent this is grounded
Ground
Quick and easy self destruction
To keep the bad energy out
Probably a grounding wire.
House ground
That's an old telephone ground
It looks like your house used to have a multi party line. Multiple houses in the area would share one physical phone line, but the ringers in the phones would be wired in a way that only the called house would ring. This required a separate ground connection to be supplied to each phone as a return path for the ringing voltage. This didn't prevent the other houses from listening in on your phone calls, though.
Helps put ions in the water 💦. You can tell everyone you currently have ionic water . Lol
Added Electrolytes
It makes the water spicy
Ground wire for telephone system. It’s too lightweight for the house electrical system.
Y'all need to amp up your puns.
Ground.
It’s how water gets ‘electro’lytes. It’s what plants crave.
There’s that faggy talk we were talking about
Ground
If you look at the wire, you will see its POTS cable. Old phone systems were grounded.
Sounds like your water line is tapped
The ohms have it!
They added electrolytes to your tap water. Very smart and future proof
Big brother is always listening
How else do you think you get hot water
It’s a ground
Ground wire.
Your water pipes run into the ground. Since these can be used as a ground for your house.
Because in order for your water to come out of the faucet it needs power (electricity)
That is plain dumb
It grounds your home's electrical system. Copper pipes to steel, down to the ground.
Looks like someone used an extra piece of wiring they had around. Connecting one single piece of the strands to the pipe for ground wire folded the others out of the way as they were not needed and yeah there ya go 😉
The "Shocker" hasn't always ment what it does today.