Will 120v To Ground Trip a Circuit Breaker? 

Something you did not mention, but I noticed you did. Under certain conditions (wet ground, raining) you should keep your feet together if you start to feel a shock. If your feet are at different distances from the gnd. rod or whatever, there most likely will be a dangerous voltage differencial between your feet and current will flow. This happened to me once. It was raining and I was walking towards a transformer down near the gnd. in the oilfield (touching nothing) when I started to feel my feet tingling, it became worse the closer I got. I stopped and put my feet together and it quit. So, I then jumped backwards and backed away. This was a higher voltage but it could still hurt you at 120 volts.

This reminds me of being a kid, going to this ungrounded light pole down the street. If you grabbed the light pole and the metal railing next to the pole it would electrocute you and you couldn't let go without some difficulty. Good times.

Love this guy. He makes electrical knowledge so accessable. Such a fantastic teacher.

You've done an excellent job of showing what many electricians are unaware: the physical ground is an unacceptable bond. Grounding (the rod in the ground) is for power quality (and lightning protection). The earth acts like a giant capacitor, smoothing out voltage spikes. It is NOT the "source;" that would be the transformer. A side effect of this is there is potential between the ground and energized components. This is where bonding comes in. Bonding is electrically connecting non current-carrying metal components, plus the physical ground AND a leg of the electrical system (usually the neutral), so they are at the same voltage potential. Should a metal part (such as an enclosure) become energized by fault current, it prevents you from being shocked. The bond to the neutral is a low resistance path, creating an intentional short that will clear fault current by tripping the breaker, before you have a chance to be shocked The physical ground is NOT a low resistance path to the source that can be used instead of running a bonding wire, as this video shows. How? The NEC allows a maximum of 25 ohms earth resistance to the grounding electrode. Using Ohms Law we see current (I) equals voltage (V) divided by resistance (R). I = 120/25 = 4.8 amps. Definitely not enough to trip a standard breaker. This video should make it clear why driving in two grounding electrodes to the ground instead of using a physical bonding wire is useless for safety. This is why all outbuildings must be connected with a separate bond wire, in addition to needing a separate grounding electrode. This also shows the value of a GFCI. If current somehow leaks to ground that is not enough to overload the breaker, it will still save your life. Thank you for demonstrating this important fact.

This man has a lot of potential!

Damn. I am shocked how this video turned out. Electrifying content.

This brings to mind the "night-crawler hunting rig" that friend of my dad used more than 60 years ago. It consisted of two metal rods with lots of electrical tape wrapped around one end and sharpened on the other end. A long insulated copper wire went from one rod to a plug and another long insulated wire ran from the other rod to the other side of the same plug. He would drive one of the rods into the ground somewhere in the yard and then insert the plug into the socket. Then he would walk around the yard poking the "hot rod" into the ground until he found a soft spot where he would leave it for a few minutes. Eventually, night-crawlers would climb out of the ground and we would pick them up to go fishing the next day. As it turns out, the reason he was looking for a soft spot is that the rig worked best in slightly damp soil. Today I know how dangerous this was. Back then I can only remember an occasional "tingle" sometimes when picking the worms up off the damp ground. Your observation about the difference in voltage drop as the distance from the hot wire rod changes is evidence of the fact that ground is not a perfect conductor. A more familiar example is the power of lightning strikes and how a strike near a horse or cow standing on the ground causes them to get knocked over. Simply put, an animal with four feet on the ground experiences a potential (voltage) at one foot and a difference in potential at a different foot due to the resistance of the soil (earth) At the thousands of volts existing in lightning at the instant it strikes, each leg of the animal represents a separate parallel path for current to flow in addition to the path through the earth ground. This serves to remind us that lying on the ground during a lightning storm is exactly the wrong thing to do. The lightning does not have to be really close to do its damage to living things.

Great video Ben. I work for a telephone company and we had a customer who's phone quit working. It was determined that the underground drop wire went bad. When the old wire was disconnected the customer came out of the house saying that his lights were going crazy. It ended up that his neutral was open and the unbalanced load was using the telephone wire sheath to get back to the transformer (probably why it went bad). If the ground rod was zero ohms back to the center tap of the transformer this would not have happened. Keep up the great videos.

Ben great video, I am a underground troubleshooter working for the utility company in NYC. Queens and Brooklyn. You would love to troubleshoot stray voltage in a underground network system. There are so many failure points, you do a great job in explaining and demonstrating the problems. Most people have no clue what the difference is between a ground and a neutral. If you opened the neutral to your home, the ground possibly pick up the amperage and you would have stray voltage all around your property. Especially on your hose spigots. 99% of flickering lights are due to open neutrals from utility, Great job, i subscribed today.

If you ever work at a campground where the owners did their own RV power boxes and did not bury the supply properly you find out very quickly that if you get a knick in the supply line you will find it quickly and painfully by just placing your hand on the ground close to the knick. Talk about a surprise when i went to sit down to work on a water line. It was a fast way to find a hidden knick in a power line but not one i hope to try again any time soon.

The reason you current is increasing somewhat is due to the voltage breaking down the insulating property of the ground (it's actually quite conductive on its own but not completely conductive or insulative either). It's heating up the water in the ground as well causing it to become conductive. Also it's working on the basis of electrolysis which makes things more conductive as well.

After years of RU-vid, this is one of the most interesting videos. Thanks.

Apprentice here. Excellent video! I just spent six hours studying ground and grounding rods and ground faults in NEC and tons of videos. One huge rabbit hole. I look forward to your series of videos.

Mike Holt would be proud. He was one of the first guys who posted a video doing this.

As a Water Utility worker. We are required to check for electrical voltage. The old school way was to ground the electrical system to the plumbing. I have been shocked when working on our water system. When we find the source we have the electrical company pull their meter and then they require them to get it fixed. Great video.

I'm amped AND VOLTED for this new series.

I watched several of Mike Holt's seminars, but there is nothing to replace the field work showing these principles in action. Great demo! What I was surprised at is the extremely low impedance of your ground system, only ~12 ohms. Clearly that's because the transformer ground is only a dozen feet away, and your earth must be very damp. Even the principle of 'ground' is a confusing misnomer. The earth is simply the least resistance connection back to the center pole of the transformer.

Great video. It was a good visual representation of how a "bad earthing" is not really effective. For reference where I live the earhing resistance rating is required to be low enough to allow the circuit breaker to do its job .For example in your case you were getting around 12 Ohms which allows for only arround 10 Amps to "flow" to earth (120V / 12 Ohm = 10A). If you had for example a couple more rods connected to this one and got the resistance lower then 6 Ohms more electricity Amps(20+) will "flow" to earth and the thermal protection in the breaker will cut the power. Earhing is brilliant as a protection it just needs to be low enough to work with the intended breakers.

An excellent demonstration of step/touch potential. Excellent job.

As an FYI over-current breakers have 2 modes for tripping, one is a bimetalic strip that bends as it's heated by the current going through it, that pushes an actuator to trip the breaker. The other is a solenoid which triggers the trip mechanism immediately. The solenoid is tuned to trip at a higher current than what the breaker is labeled as. And the bimetalic strip is set to trip after a few minutes of rated current. So your short arc welding adventure will have drawn more current than 20A before the breaker tripped. The combo breakers use more sophisticated methods to detect the fault they are guarding in combination with the normal over-current detection.

Now you need to experiment with a SWER (Single Wire Earth Return) circuit. They use them for remote locations and also they were used for early rural electrification. Typically they used high voltages and a single steel conductor because the high tensile of the steel allowed larger spacing between poles. Low resistance grounding systems are key to making it work well so multipal rods and treatment around the rods with salt or other chemicals helps a lot. You'd be surprised at what you can power even at lower voltages like 120. Running a couple lights or small power tools is no problem

Ben, thanks again, interesting video. It would be worth your while having a read about substation grounding mats. These are critical to the safety of personnel working there. In fact, the normal setup is for the chain link fence to be grounded to this mat to prevent folks who touch the fence (unlock the gate for example) from being electrocuted from those earth voltage gradients that could be present in certain circumstances.

Ben - Keep on keepin' on with this stuff... pure gold!

Benjamin, Very good video! I will reference this when I see necessary to change someone's mind! About 99% of electricians and engineers incorrectly think it should trip. What I taught was, If you need worms to go fishing, get one of those 12" long nails, attach it to a wooden handle(like from a rake) solder a conductor to it up the handle and install a plug to it on the hot side. Now get an extension cord and plug it into a standard receptacle that you connect to the breaker in this video. Plug it in, and probe the ground in different places. Worms come very quickly out of the ground. Suggest you pull it out of the dirt before picking up the worms though! Respectfully, Kevin

2:31 "...without pre-twisting". You, sir, just broke the Internet.

Your Lastname Stahlstrom means Steel Electricity in german. So your name fits perfectly to the video

Things I knew, forgot and saw in practice. Very good video. Especially demonstrative for downed power lines.

Southwest Missouri here, I really like all your videos. That was an exceptionally good experiment thank you

You're lining up to be one superb and high end electrician in the years to come. Greetings from Arizona. Oh yeah, please make a video about extracting worms.

Holy shit when you stuck the probes in the ground I didn't expect that result!

Howdy. Absolutely wonderful clip. I admire your persistence. Highly regards.

A genuie thank you for allowing me to learn through your experiments!

Bro, the ground you just put in is a different ground from the one your panel is hooked up on. The soil has electrical resistance! This is exactly why there is one ground per service and only one! If instead of nailing a new ground, you just connect to the existing one, you would have a short immediately, just like you had when you sorted to your panel... Now, in a building with a good grounding there is less risk because metal in the building is good conductor, which would trip the breaker if touched by a hot wire. Great video, but I wish you'd explained it all better, the way you left it, makes it look like, in a correctly grounded system you are not safe.

this man is a full sender! hahah send it bro

Yo Benji! We appreciate the content and your style to teach us what your research has proved thus far. Your videos are enlightening. Thanks for the spark Cap!

Very interesting. Love it. That spark off the panel reminds me of years ago when I was working on my panel, I touched a wire to something and I bounced off a wall behind me. I paid a little better attention after that 😳

I really like this video! I'm into structure cabling. Short to Ground will only the breaker of the Ground is bonded to Neutral( at the Main Panel)! I've seen engineers and electricians install 'isolalated ground' that does not connects the building grounding system at Main Panel.😱

So lucky to have a pole driver to set your ground rods. All I ever get is a bottle of water.

Great instructional video, you have made this ground connected safety issue more easy to understand. Koodos!

although I know the principle behind this topic it is still different when you see a live demonstration of it this is a perfect demonstration

Perfect example of how downed power lines can be really dangerous

Couple thoughts, When I have done ground resistance testing utilizing FOP method most single ground rods I’ve tested in dry soil have been around 10-25 ohms. These breakers have a long time and instantaneous trip elements. To hit the instantaneous region you are going to be somewhere around 10-15X the FLA rating otherwise you are in the time-over current region. Trying to measure fault current you may be better served by a meter that has a peak function as some meters are not “fast” enough to capture that instantaneous peak reading. Cool video!

The arc to the panel frame IS NOT 20 amps! It is 120 divided by whatever the circuit impedance is which is greater than 100A. Impedance is way less then 1 ohm. (If it were 1 ohm, there would be 400W dissipation in the wiring circuit at 20A!) Every breaker has an "I squared T" rating. Given that the rate of connection is "fast" compared to the breaker response time, the current will go to whatever the circuit can deliver. Even a standard "washing machine" induction motor draws over 50A for a second when starting up. Breaker I squared T rating of the breaker must be able to pass this (or there will be nuisance trips), so higher surges or even 100's of amps are possible if the surge starts abruptly.

Another great video... very informative, a little drama, and easily digested by a “layman.” - thank you Ben!!

This isn't expert opinion. There are two ground systems in household electricity. The ground rod which provides a path for high voltage spikes induced by nearby lighting strikes, static from dry wind air flow, in big systems partial faults in motor windings and such. If the ground rod wasn't there then those spikes would build until they breached the insulation voltage rating and/or found an arc path to Earth. Uncontrolled arc paths are bad because they can happen right through or around flammable material. The high voltage spikes are high frequency and dissipate in the Earth resistance as they travel to the transmission system ground rod or the Earths static field. It can still have enough current to kill a puny human if they are part of the path. The safety ground is the bonding wire that connects every part that could become energized due to a hot wire fault, such as chassis, water and gas piping, etc, with a very low impedance path back to the transformer and then the breaker to clear the fault. You can still die in that split second it takes for the breaker to trip if your body makes the final connection. The bonding of the neutral to the system ground provides a path for the system spikes. The bonding of the safety ground to the neutral provides a path through the transformer to the breaker. The ground rod started out at 9 amps which is 13 ohms and increased, likely due to heating along the path in the Earth reducing resistance. 20 amps for the breaker is 6 ohms but you need lower resistance to cause an overcurrent fault or more time for a heating fault. The ground rod was interacting with the system ground of the box, the Earth provided a resistance between the test and system ground rods. When you touched the cabinet, you were interacting with the safety ground system, i.e., almost no resistance, high current to trip the breaker. The only way to get everything to the same potential is to use a low resistance connection, i.e., wire. And electricity takes all paths back to complete the circuit, including the ground rod if there is a path, not just the least resistance. The least resistance path gets the bulk of the parallel current.

When the wire was touched to the metallic box, the current was far greater than 20 amps. The only limit on the current would be the impedance of the secondary winding of the utility transformer and the current probably peaked to 10K amps before the breaker tripped. That’’s why the wire melted. 20 amps should not have harmed the wire.

I love this guy. I saw his video 2 years ago and subscribed! Thank you for testing these electrical theories into objective reality

Great series idea , good luck and stay safe, Best wishes for all.

Im looking forward to this series. Very good video! Grounding rod from what im getting in my electrical apprentice journey is for lightning mainly. Its all about the current as those electrons get back to the source that trips a breaker so going to the grounding rod wouldn't do it. As for why that happens im still learning haha. I know bonding vs grounding is a confusing subject. But really grounding rods get too much focus.

Just a note, and I would actually like to see this tested if you have a meter that can test the actual short duration spike, but when you shorted that conductor to the housing and got that good arc that vaporized the conductor you were probably drawing more than 20 amps. Yes the breaker is rated to trip at twenty amps but they're mechanical devices and take a finite time to switch so for at least part of a cycle you could have been drawing consideriably more than 20 amps.

Thank you for teaching Benjamin learning alot

Practical replication experimentation thanks for sharing good stuff love it.

Bonding is what makes everything safe!

You'll trip the breaker if the ground stake is close enough to your panel's earth stake to allow more than 20A to flow. It's interesting to note that locally the earth has a fairly high resistance (as demonstrated by your voltage gradient) however because of the planet's size it has a low resistance because the area of the conductor is huge even though the conductivity of the ground is lower than a traditional conductor.

I regularly work with 12kV breakers. Thanks to this video I'm thinking I should open all breaker cabinets in class 2 gloves.

Have to say, I am total blind and I bought the Home sense and had it installed and its helping me know what is useing all the power and so forth while moveing each line to the other breaker to take away from directly from the grid. Thanks for showing what would happen if I mess up and power go into ground. so I need to get a GFI breaker 240v breaker from the inverter so if a wire is wrong it trips. Thanks

You could have had some incandescent lights hooked to the live and various locations in the ground to demonstrate the voltage gradient.

Depends on how well it connects to power station ground. Source ground. Earth ground is not the same as source ground. From the generator source.

Some possible additional experiments: 1. Wet the ground near the ground rod. 2. Wet the ground rod near the panel. 3. Soak the ground to simulate a heavy rain 4. Move the ground rod half way to the panel My guess is that wetting the ground near the ground rods will substantially improve the effectiveness of the ground rod because effective surface area of the ground rod will be increased substantially. My guess is that moving the ground rod closer to the panel will cause the breaker to trip, but I'm not sure. The resistance of some paths between the panel and the grounding rod would be substantially reduced but when the grounding rod is farther away the area that current passes through might be increased enough to counteract the fact that there are some paths have significantly less resistance when the ground rod and the panel are closer.

Thank you so much Ben. Very clear explanation.

That is the way of getting live worm bait "Night-crawlers" beware if it is wet or when it rains!!!

Mike Holt has great grounding and bonding info

Great explaination and experiment. Have to check my grounding

You are awesome brother. This morning I did the same and the results were just equeals. Woo

Nice demonstration. The office I work at(though not right now) I have often noticed nightcrawlers coming out of the ground after it rained. I had assumed they came out either to escape the water or maybe due to disease. After the comments about nightcrawlers coming out after running a current through the ground, I have to wonder if there is some current from another source that is passinng through when the ground gets wet. When I am at the office next time, I may have to bring my multimeter with me and see if there is any voltage difference

Did you measure the resistance of your earth rod ? It’s such a high resistance the MCB wouldn’t trip you would eventually start a fire 🔥 on the cable you would use your rcd for additional protection 👋 🇬🇧

First thing I thought of was the step potential from his proposed experiment, great to see he knew this and showed us the potential gradient. The understanding of this can take electricians/engineers years to grasp so great to see a young fella on the ball.

Great video!! Another good reason why I subscribed!

My grandfather used to do this to get worms. He would dampen the ground then turn it on and wait for the worms to surface then turn it off and collect the worms.

This is the reason that you shouldn't put your feet far apart in the event of a lightning strike. My aunt always told the story where lightning struck next to a cow. The poor animal had its legs wide apart and was killed by the current in the ground.

I’ll be honest. I thought it would trip. Level of thinking. “15A breaker, going straight to ground. Thought the draw would be too great and that would have tripped it.” Good to have this knowledge considering all the renovations I have been doing. Might have to upgrade to GFCI/AFCI breakers even if it is not called for per code. Seems like a safe step to take. Thanks for taking the time to do these experiments.

Dude, my curious mind has always wanted to do this but I never have. Thank you for sharing! The truth hertz!

Congratulations, you just built the first copper wire heating element. Welcome to the 19th century!

This is why you need to connect a metal outdoor stage at a festival to the panel ground and not just drive a ground rod and Earth it. That's what the utility here in Nova Scotia was calling for any metal outdoor stage has to have a ground rod down 8 feet and the stage connected to it. No other connections. So if a power cable shorts to the stage the breaker will not trip leaving the stage live to kill people. The utility actually thinks the ground rod will trip the breaker. scary! I have been wanting to do that test for a long time and show the utility the results.

Sounds like potentially a great series. Thanks!

Great video; excited for the series! And you got me on the first test, ha--I didn't notice it was a DF breaker and answered "no" on the poll. Almost had an internal crisis when it tripped, lol. 14:38 - "That's wild. Ok, I'm going to go shut this off." Exactly what I was thinking as you were stepping around, ha. Stay safe!

As long as you have a sacrificial GFCI breaker, you should show what happens if the neutral wire is not installed. Or even if it is incorrectly connected to a ground wire ;)

Thats the best way to learn. Do the things you should never do xD Let's connect ground rod to live wire and walk nearby ;D

By the way. .ur main panel job u did at ur house is a work of art..excellent videos. Keep them coming.

my best Electricity classes and without paying Excelente video 👍

So I have been directed here from another video. Very interesting video and this somewhat goes against what I am used to. I'm a commercial electrician however and have never worked on anything smaller than a building with a 2,000 amp 277/480 delta Y service. In these buildings our grounding is rather substantial we bond almost every aspect of the building and the sheer amount of conductive mass connected to the panels is pretty extreme with everything being connected with typically a CAD welded #250 Bare ground wire as well as a Ufer ground, Delta Ground, Cold Water Ground, Building Steel Ground and of course Every other piece and aspect of the building are completely and totally connected (ignoring any IG's that may be present in the building). So I know my way around the Installation of larger electrical systems. NOW in this scenario, you are connecting your hot wire to earth directly but Your ground rod is not a part of your electrical system. I think It is worth pointing out that this is somewhat misleading... At your first means of disconnect for a separately derived system, you have to bond your Grounded conductor directly to your Grounding Conductor which then brings everything all together at your main switch whatever that may be. The reason I'm bringing this up is people may confuse that ground rod as the same thing as the GROUND in a building. It is in absolutely no way the same thing but I don't really think that was clear in this video. I also don't quite understand exactly what is going on here. I'm not certain but I suspect you are getting 9 amps through your circuit because even though you have no virtually no resistance on your circuit you are getting resistance between the ground rod for your experiment and the ground rod for your electrical system giving you X amps depending on how resistive the dirt is in that particular location using 120V. Would this same thing happen if your testing ground rod was in a theoretical void completely isolated from the rest of the earth but still driven into a similar mass? Thanks for reading if you bothered! and Thanks for replies in advanced if someone does happen to bother ;)

So how far from the gradient can you be and still energize a light bulb?

Your work is much appreciated

Great video Benjamin.

When I watch the video, I feel like I'm in the Stone Age. As far as electrics are concerned, you are unbelievable light years behind in your country.

Years ago my male dog peed on a ground stake at the foot of a power pole and got a nasty shock. So guys watch where you pee.

Good video Benjamin! I had someone comment on one of my videos asking me this question and I replied saying that if it was a good ground with sufficiently low resistance, it would trip the breaker. He then pointed me to this video. Had I thought about it a little longer before answering I would have changed my mind. It reminded me of how my father and I got rid of dew worms in the lawn by placing 2 metal coat hangers in the ground about 3 feet apart and attaching them to hot and neutral. The breaker didn't trip, but the dew worms sure didn't like it and would come wriggling out of the ground almost immediately! Again, we must remind our viewers, "DON'T TRY THESE EXPERIMENTS YOURSELF" Way too much room for error! Step voltage and touch voltage can be very dangerous and deadly!

Great experiment Ben .. Keep it up

I knew it wouldn't the breaker, but was suprized at the 10 amps. I wouldn't have thought 15ft of dirt would conduct that many amps.

To trip the 20 amp breaker the ground would have to be 6 ohms or less. Very few location have ground even close to that number.

Cool demonstration.

facinating series. thank you. -C

Would be interesting to see the current between points in the ground - or even see if you can power something from two ground spikes

Please Add ohms law into some of the conversation particularly with ground rod resistance

Thank you for the educational content!

Very excellent video and desperately needed!

Ive actually been tagged in the eye with molten slag. Managed to get under my welding helmet. That one hurt. Im ok with no lasting effects but I got a bit lucky.

I found this hilarious about how many people know about how to get worms out of the ground

Ben The ground wire is to keep equipment at same potential as the neutral. As you video show at ground rod their is zero potential , the further you go away the higher the voltage. Therefore the green wire keeps the equipment or as you call it frame at same potential which prevents you becoming a alternate path to ground and getting shocked it is not designed to carry neutral load. This is called step potential. Your GFI type circuit breaker are called differential relays what goes out has to match what coming back and detests leak / shorts to ground and it will trip almost instantly as it see as you stated as low as 5 milliamps. Better than 20amp overload technology. The main thing you have not talked about is the neutral wire can kill you even if main and branch/ feeder CB are open . The neutral is still connected and is therefore it goes back to utility company transformer feeding you and other houses, etc. Therefore if you are working on circuit close to another service panel you could be the path of least resistance and be a parallel path back to utility company transformer ( step potential again.) As a retired utility company grid operator and licensed electrical contractor I have seen one fatality and one person shocked due to this. Yes this is 1 in a million but possible , however in your farm setting 1 in a billion. Also soil type, moisture content , water pipes, gas lines, sewer pipe rebar in major highways etc , etc. and distribution transformer specs. are tested and minium trips for circuits are calculated on a utility grid most houses however are using 15, 20 amp , etc circuit breakers or 1940 technology. The new codes and GFI type circuit breakers are 1,000 times better to protect your house and you against death , fire, and shocks. Final note If on a power grid it's down and your running off your generator and lighting hits the neutral lead on the grid it will want to find ground and can come down that utility company ground lead and it will try to go thru your panel to your ground and if your generator ground/ neutral is not isolated it can back feed and damage generator windings This depends on a number of variables of the situation, how close lighting hit to your equipment, intensity of hit moisture content , size of wire , etc., Etc. It is a possibility Therefore a high end transfer switch will isolate and change neutral over to your generator which will be a grounded system even if it's a open neutral as your video shows.

This is why the NEC requires two 8 foot ground rods spaced at least 6 feet apart - one isn't enough. This is also why your ground is bonded to neutral in the main breaker panel. That neutral is not only center-tapped at the transformer, but it runs all the way back to the substation and is grounded at every pole and every service. The service ground doesn't protect anything, necessarily. The neutral is almost always going to be the path of least resistance. But unbalanced loads mean that the neutral carries current, and we want the neutral to be at zero volts so neutral is tied to ground everywhere possible. The neutral wires inside a house are almost always going to carry current, so we have a separate ground wire to serve as a safety.