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I am planning to install an antenna on the gable at one end of a house. The electrical service panel is on the other end of the house, about 100 ft away. I plan to install an earth ground outside and right below the antenna. I now need to bond that ground to the electrical service panel ground. This bonding conductor will be 6 AWG copper bare wire, run through the house‘s crawl space. Many people seem to run bonding conductors outside the structure: I am presuming it OK to run this through a basement or crawl space?

Furthermore, the service panel is on one wall of a garage, and the bonding conductor's path through the crawl space meets an opposite wall of the garage. Concrete sidewalk surrounds the walls of the garage not attached to the house, like an apron.

Question: can I route the bonding conductor up the wall and into the garage‘s attic, towards the service panel on the opposite wall? Or should I saw-cut the concrete sidewalk and emplace the bonding conductor inside? The service panel is distant from the municipal water connection, so they appear to not be connected, so cold-water pipe bonding is not an option.

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    The reason most people like it outside of a house is that antennas become lighting rods. Lighting has about more than 100,000 times the power of your electrical system. People do not like that much power inside the house if hit.
    – crip659
    Commented Jan 29 at 13:07
  • The segment of wire from the rod to the main panel is called the "grounding electrode conductor" or GEC. National electrical code requires it to be a single continuous piece of wire with one exception. I think that's why many run it outside: it's easier than pulling a long 6 AWG solid through the structure. But you certainly could pull it through.
    – Greg Hill
    Commented Jan 29 at 14:24
  • I see that NEC 250.64 specifies routing of the GEC. Must be continuous wire (generally speaking).
    – D.Mac
    Commented Jan 30 at 3:39

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Well, I looked over the NEC 250.64 and surrounding sections pretty carefully. There’s no indication that running a GEC through walls or even above a garage ceiling would not provide the necessary ground bonding, so I think this application is fine. Certainly a GEC is not required by code in order to dissipate lightning; a direct strike on a dwelling will always do some damage; that is what lightning rods are built to handle; a different grounding situation.

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