In 2/3/4 gang box, should you combine all grounds using crimp connectors?

Question

When I have multiple lines going in/out of a 1 gang box (with an outlet/receptacle or switch), I typically combine all the grounds into a single wire using crimp connectors:

However, when working with a 2/3/4 gang box with multiple outlets, should I be combining all the grounds into a single wire using crimp connectors? Because this would leave one of the outlets without any ground attached to it.

Or should I add in an extra loose ground wire into the crimp connector, so that the crimp connector now has 2 wires coming out of it? Then connect each one of those ground wires to the 2 outlets. That seems to make more sense but I'm not sure if it's the proper way to do it.

What is the proper, code-appropriate approach to dealing with multiple ground wires in a 2/3/4 gang box scenario?

Answer 1

You have to connect a ground wire to every device's ground terminal, that's not optional. There's lots of ways to do it.

You could crimp pigtails in the crimp ring, as long as you don't exceed the capacity of the crimp ring.

One good way to go is leave one ground wire very long, and pass that through the crimp ring and hit all the ground terminals on the devices with that one long wire.

If you don't have a long one, you could crimp in one long pigtail, and hit all the ground terminals with that one long pigtail.

Answer 2

If your method of splicing wires doesn't allow you to splice an arbitrary number of wires together, then get rid of that method and get one that does. Not least you are allowed to chain connections, splice wires 1-3 to a carrier wire which then goes over to splice with wires 4-6, or whatever your method needs. Plenty of options.

The point is, hook up the wires that need hooking up. Be flexible enough with method to get that done.

And remember the first rule of grounding, removing a device cannot break the ground for downline devices.