TIL a bad ground can hide in a crawl space for years

Got a call for a house in the old part of town with constant signal drop. The homeowner said three other guys gave up. Spent the first hour checking the usual stuff, lines, splitters, modem. Nothing. Then I went under the house. The main ground wire was attached to a pipe, but the clamp was so rusty it just fell apart in my hand. The wire itself was green and brittle. Had to run a whole new 6-gauge line to a proper rod outside. What should have been a 30-minute check turned into a 4-hour dig through mud and spiderwebs. Anyone ever find a ground that bad just... doing nothing for who knows how long?

3 comments

3 Comments

blair_martin2mo ago

Found a ground strap in an attic once that was just draped over a nail. Not even attached. The whole system was floating. Customer had blamed every electronic failure in the house on bad luck for a decade. It's amazing what people live with when the problem comes on slow. Those hidden faults are the worst kind. You really have to want to find them.

alicehernandez2mo ago

Wait, isn't a floating ground still a path, just a really bad one? Honestly, that strap over the nail might have carried enough to fool a basic tester but not handle a real fault. Tbh, the slow failures he saw were probably from tiny surges and noise with nowhere good to go, not pure luck. It's wild how a half-connected ground can trick you into thinking the system works at all.

morgan_black902mo ago

Ever seen a ground rod just sitting in loose dirt?