Data Equipment Grounding 1

pharaoh55 · Jun 8, 2004

Currently desiging a ground system for data rooms in a large high school building. There are five of these rooms several feet apart. Each room has a copper ground bus 3"x12" and are interconnected with #6 ground cable which also bonds to all cable trays, equipment racks etc. These data rooms contact rack mounted equipment required for the schools network and internet system. This system must connect the service ground point. Question? The building was built without this connection and it is several hundred feet away and just in the next room is a large distribution panel with grounding conductors running back to the service ground. Can the data ground connect to the building ground at the distribution panel ground? How about connecting to building steel?

Thanks for any help.

pharoah55

GOTWW · Jun 9, 2004

The MGB's need to be connected to the service ground. If you have a near by panelboard that is grounded to the SE, this should be sufficient, assuming that upstream there is a real grounding electrode system, and one N-G bond at the primary service entrance. It will not hurt to bond to the structural steel, supplemental grounding electrodes, rebar, etc. Single point grounding adopted by the telecoms, is looked upon somewhat skeptically by the IEEE Green people.

Generally for SRG systems, the NEC grounding is a safety issue, as for high frequency, currents, ribbon bonding the equipment racks perscribed by various agencies is recommended. Motorola spec, and the FAA spec's should be good guidelines, but, are overkill for most applications.

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Data Equipment Grounding 1

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