Some of the BOs in this area have allowed the rebar to be turned up in the wall and the GEC connection to be made there instead of in the footer. I would like to know if any other jurisdictions allow this and what if any proplems you have encountered. What are your thoughts?

The turned up rebar is not a UFER. There have been many discussions on this board that say this.



ps - Footer is slang; it's footing.

I did search the topics but did not find much. Might have done it wrong. I always thought this connection was required to be made in the footing. Sometimes this rebar gets cutt off or left out completely. Just wondering how everyone else does it.




ps - we like slang up here.

Well the slang for the up turned rebar is a 7 iron.
It was allowed years ago in Pinellas county.
Here are my thoughts.
First the rebar does not have any corrosion protection.
It is designed to be encased in concrete.
If it is then the rebar will hold up.
If exposed then corrosion will eat up the rebar and start its way into the slang(footer). When rebar rusts it expands which can result in cracking the concrete.
In one area in pinellas even the zinc coated ground rods rusted away at grade level within a few years. For whatever reason.

Now back to the slang(7 iron).
It usually is a short piece of rebar with a 90 degree bend hence the name.
Tie wired to the normal slang(footer) rebar which is 20 foot long.
So going back to 250.52 it must be 20 foot long with out tie wire.
Located near the bottom of the slang(footer)
Be of at least 1/2" diameter.

So even if you use a full stick of rebar. bend a 90 on the end of the rebar in the concrete, It will at best be around 18 to 19 feet long.

The part about tie wires at the end of the article in my opinion refers to bonding to the rest of the slang(footer) rebar in the rest of the slang(footer).

My 2 cents.

So what you are saying is that technically, the connection to the doohickey needs to be at the bottom of the footer, in order to be a true concrete cased electrode.

I never liked the rebar-sticking-out method that was used in Pinellas for years, because as Ruben mentions the rebar is left exposed and corrodes, and so does the connection. Sometimes the rebar was even stubbed below grade. From experience I can say that the connections were frequently loose, and the gardener was somehow magnetically drawn to this connection point, which would get knocked into by his shovel or weedwacker, I never knew which. Or maybe it was the dreaded sprinkler guy (they have some real neat wiring methods, too).

Then others - partially agreeing with this logic - invented a new method - turn up the rebar into an interior wall and make the connection there. Ok fine, but...is that really 20' of rebar near the bottom of a concrete footing? Or is that a splice? Did anyone check the steel twisty-ties to see if they were tight? Is the 90 even connected to the footing? Or did the steel guy just "conveniently" stick it in the right spot, without even splicing it? If there was a splice, did it have proper lap? Did someone even check for lap? Has this method even been tested? (Don't laugh in Poke County to this day, some stick the 90's in after the slab is poured, breaking about every code in the book)

So after a decade or more of reinventing ways to confuse and confound the simple and pure, unadulterated, concrete encased electrode, the truth of the matter is that the connection to the doohickey needs to be at the bottom of the concrete footer, in order to be a true concrete cased electrode.......and sorry John I thought there was a post on this, my mistake.

doohickey,Whatchamacallit, all the same.

It is the way they have been doing it in Lee county and still are as far as I know.
They do use a whole stick but fall back on the idea that there is plenty of total length and the 7 iron "shall be permitted to be bonded together <with the rest of the steel> by the usual steel tie wires or other effective means".
The corrosion issue is considered minimal since this comes up inside the envelope of the house.

From a couple years ago
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/ufer.jpg

I really don't have a dog in this fight but when the contractor told me a 4ga copper wire sticking out of the footer would have a street life of about 3 days (or nights) I thought he might have a point.

We do allow the rebar to be turned up inside the wall, using a 20ft piece of rebar(7iron) and securely tied to the footer rebar, verified by electrical inspector before the building inspector passes the footer inspection

Looking at the situation purely from an electrical standpoint, it really doesn't make any real difference. As long as the prescriptive requirements of 250.42(A)(3) are met, the actual orientation of the rebar and where the GEC connects will not functionaly change its performance.

That being said, I agree that the electrode itself should be encased, thus the GEC conection and a portion of the GEC should also be encased. If the rebar leaves its encasement its no longer an electrode and it doesn't qualify as a GEC.

I feel one solution would be to allow a vertical portion of the rebar to serve as the connection point if that rebar is in a poured cell. That way, the prescritive requirements of the section are met by the portion of the rebar in the horizontal footing. The short vertical section also gets encased along with the GEC connection. This is permitted by 250.68(A) Exception No. 2.

Another solution is to make the GEC conenction near the top of the slab/floor where the rebar protrudes up, cut of the rebar, and then form and pour the assembly to re-encase the whole thing.

From a structural stand-point, as long as the rebar is not being used as reinforcement, its really not under the scope of the building code. But, that still doesn't change the fact that it could pose a corrosive hazard to the concrete over time. The effect would be much less if the rebar is stubbed up in an interior wood / metal framed wall rather than an exterior masonry wall.

This is a good topic...

Why can't we do just what's in the code. Than all the other problems go away.