The instructions on my new spa call for it to be grounded to a water pipe. The same as the one I am replacing. Infact the terminal is external to the control cabinet, there is no ground lug inside the cabinet.
I have a ground wire in the flexible conduit that I will be connecting to the control box. I will have to drill a hole in the side of the cabinet and run the ground wire to ground terminal. I will also run an earth ground to a copper rod driven into the ground.
Does anyone understand why they are calling for a separate ground? Or are the instructions left over from the days when houses did not have a ground?
Could it be along the lines of grounding both sides of a water meter, so if one side of the plumbing is disconnected while carrying current the human doing the disconnecting doesn’t become the conductor?
Yes the ground terminal is mounted on the outside of the control box.
A ground wire is connected from the terminal to each pump motor and the heater.
There is no place to mount a grounding bar in the control cabinet.
The cabinet does not have any breakers. I have a panel box with a GFI breaker in it near the spa. Ran conduit from the panel to the spa in conduit. I ran 4 wires in the conduit, 2 hots, one neutral, and a ground. I drilled a hole in the side of the control box ran the ground through the hole and connected the ground wore to the ground terminal. I also ran a separate ground to a grounding rod driven into the ground.
you would want a bushing or a cable clamp in the hole in the control box that the grounded wire passes through so that the wire doesn’t get damaged.
you need to connect multiple grounding wires together (your panel grounded wire, copper rod wire) to that lug. unless the lug is made to take multiple wires then you may get a bad connection (now or eventually) if you put more than one wire into it. joint the multiple wires along with a short jumper together in a split both connector, place the other single end of the jumper in the lug on the box.