One of my clients a high end restaurant called me today he was getting a phone line fault indication
on his Fire Alarm and I went to the site and started testing finding the phone lines where fine but every so many minutes a fault would happen when I looked at the panels log I also saw other weird
Things going on as well with the processor. after checking everything over and rebooting the Burglar system and the fire system I noticed while them waiting to boot up that a new Water filter system had been installed and some lazy ass plumber had disconnected the ground wire and clamp since it no longer fit on the bigger pipe being used. The Plumber never bothered to tell any one this needed fixed as it is an essential for the fire and burglar alarm panels to keep them in safe operational order. First the ground wires remove any potential electrical current which may be leaking from a faulty component which is not enough to trip a breaker but can still deliver a significant shock depending on your health it could be fatal.
2nd the ground wires provide for what is known as zero or reference ground in electronics if certain chips etc become confused they look for zero ground to rest there counters. no ground or dirty ground machines controls etc can malfunction and lock up.
3rd the ground on Fire and burglar panels provide a ground reference for the telephone line voltage verification circuit. which tells the location and or central station if voltage is not on phone line and it is not working. 4th it passes stray surge voltage when a near by lightning strike or surge enters the system.
As you can see that simple little ground wire is important and when it comes to bigger ground wire jumpers used around water meters for safe passage of stray current if a ground wire used for an electrical service is not removed properly a plumber could be electrocuted if the electrical services neutral has deteriorated. But even these I see removed all the time when Back Flow preventers are installed by professional plumbers who again do not give a dam and tell no one when it does not fit.
In the latest case the restaurant owner called the plumbing company who sent a supervisor on scene and he had me give him the bill and they wrote me out a check for having to fix things.
Needless to say he had some serious conversations with his plumbing crews.
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