Forgot to ground a drop in a rainstorm and learned my lesson quick

I was up on a roof in Austin last Tuesday, running a new line for a customer. Storm rolled in faster than I expected, and I got lazy and skipped putting my ground block on before the rain hit. Ended up with a bad ground loop that killed the signal on three rooms. Had to go back Thursday and redo the whole run with a proper ground bond. It cost me 2 extra hours and I felt dumb the whole time. Has anyone else gotten burned by skipping a ground in bad weather?

3 comments

3 Comments

evaperez2mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait, was the ground actually the reason your signal died? I mean, it could have been the rain itself messing with the connection or moisture getting into the line. Idk, I've skipped grounding plenty of times during storms and never had a problem like that. Maybe the issue was just a bad connector or water in the box, not the ground loop. People get real obsessed with ground blocks but sometimes you just get unlucky with the weather, not the setup.

dakota_fox2mo ago

Man oh man @evaperez I gotta disagree with you on this one. Skipping a ground during a storm is like driving with your eyes closed and saying "well I made it before" until you don't. The ground loop doesn't always kill your signal right away but it creates a path for voltage differences that can fry equipment or cause weird interference later. Rain alone might mess with a connection but a proper ground block stops that voltage from building up in the first place. People get casual about it because they get lucky a few times then act surprised when things go wrong. It's the same pattern as not locking your car in a safe neighborhood - eventually someone tests that door handle and you learn the hard way.

patricia_rodriguez1mo ago

Wait, has anyone ever had that thing happen where you skip one tiny step and it snowballs into a whole bigger problem? That's exactly what grounding is though. It's not about the rain itself or the connector, it's about protecting the whole system from voltage spikes that can happen even if you get lucky a hundred times. I've seen guys skip grounding for years and then one bad storm fries their whole setup. It's like not wearing a seatbelt because you never crashed before, until the one time you do and it's a disaster. Grounding is cheap insurance that takes two minutes, so why risk it? The fact that you had to redo it proves skipping it cost you more time in the end, not less.