Grounding and bonding conductor: what we buy and how we review it
Green insulated, bare stranded, and every size from 14 AWG to 4/0 turns up here in the same week, usually because a service was rebuilt or a ground grid was cut out of a building that is coming down.
- Green or bare
- 14 AWG to 4/0
- Jumpers and grid
Sizing is where a grounding lot gets interesting. NEC Table 250.66 sets grounding electrode conductor size against the largest ungrounded service conductor, and Table 250.122 sets equipment grounding conductor size against the rating of the overcurrent device. Neither is a guess, and a seller who knows which table the wire came from already has half the paperwork done. A length with no size and no tag cannot be matched to a table at all.
The material itself is simple: bare or green-covered copper, solid in the smaller sizes, stranded above 8 AWG, in THHN, THWN-2, XHHW-2, or bare soft-drawn copper to ASTM B3. Aluminium grounding conductor exists at the large end and is permitted in some applications with listed terminations, but most of what leaves a plant is copper and most of it is green. Colour is the least of those three questions and the easiest to check.
We buy full reels and partial reels of green insulated conductor, bare stranded cut-offs, bonding jumpers out of switchgear and busbar installations, and ground grid material recovered from demolition or utility work. The material is rarely valuable per foot and rarely worthless in bulk. What decides it is documentation and separation. A seller who kept the reel tags has already done the hard part, and it shows in the terms.
What we buy in this family
Condition and documentation decide the basis, not the family alone. These are the forms this material usually arrives in.
- Green THHN and XHHW grounding conductor
- Bare stranded copper grounding wire
- Bonding jumpers from switchgear
- Ground grid conductor from substations
- Ground rod and clamp assemblies
- Equipment grounding conductor cut-offs
- Tagged partial reels, 2 through 4/0
Where a grounding lot comes from and what it contains
Most of it is a by-product of another job. A service change-out leaves the old grounding electrode conductor in a bucket. A switchgear replacement leaves bonding jumpers cut to length and then cut again. A substation upgrade leaves ground grid conductor pulled up rather than abandoned. Plants rarely run a grounding project; they have grounding left over from one.
That is why grounding lots are mixed by nature. Green 6 AWG from a panel, bare 2/0 from a ground ring, a coil of 4 AWG with no tag, and a dozen factory jumpers with lugs still on them arrive in one gaylord. The lugs are worth cutting off and the wire is worth sorting by size, and we say which is which.
Bare versus green, copper versus aluminium
Green insulation identifies function, not quality. A tagged reel of green XHHW-2 is a known quantity and moves as material. Bare stranded copper is more versatile and easier to re-use, but it is also more likely to have been buried, and buried conductor arrives dirty with a reduced cross-section.
Aluminium grounding conductor is real and permitted at larger sizes with listed terminations, but it is a small share of what the region generates and easy to mistake for copper in a dim storehouse. A magnet and a file settle it in a second, and we do not pay copper basis for aluminium.
What we need to see before we set a basis
A photograph of each reel tag, a count of loose coils by size, and an honest note on where the material sat for the last ten years. If it came out of a demolition, say so, because soil and concrete residue change the review. If it came off a storehouse shelf, the tag matters more than the picture of the wire.
Where this cable turns up in the two states
Substation and switchgear work is the steady source. Duke Energy and the electric cooperatives that cover most of rural North Carolina and South Carolina rebuild distribution plant continuously, and every rebuild produces surplus grounding conductor, bare jumpers and short lengths of green conductor that never reach a truck. Industrial plants in the Piedmont hold the same material in larger sizes because their service entrances are larger.
The textile legacy matters here in a way it does not for other families. Old mills were grounded with whatever was standard when they were wired, and a change-out in a former textile building in the Upstate or the North Carolina Piedmont still turns up bare ground ring conductor and bonding jumpers that have been in place for decades.
Coverage
North and South Carolina
Every city page carries the local industrial base and access notes. Start from a state hub if you are not sure which one applies.
If the material is in one of these states
Grounding and bonding conductor questions
Can I mix bare and green grounding conductor in one lot?
You can, and most lots do. We separate them at review rather than asking a seller to do it first, because size and condition matter more than colour. Green insulated conductor with a legible tag is the easiest to place. Bare conductor is judged on cleanliness and on whether it has been buried, and those two tests decide most of the value.
How do I identify the size of a grounding conductor?
Read the print on insulated conductor, or count and measure the strands on bare. A 2/0 has nineteen strands of a known gauge and a 4/0 has nineteen larger ones. If the wire is unmarked and the size matters, cut a six-inch sample and keep it with the tag. We can work from a photograph with a ruler in frame.
Do you buy grounding conductor from a demolition site?
Yes. It is recovery material rather than stock, and we treat it that way. Concrete residue, soil, cut ends and remnants of exothermic welds all reduce what the metal is worth, and the honest description is the one that gets a load accepted without argument at the gate. There is no advantage in calling it clean.
Is it worth separating small cut-offs from full reels?
Where the reels are tagged, yes, because they are reviewed as material while the cut-offs are reviewed by weight. If nothing is tagged, sorting by size still helps, but the difference is smaller. We will tell you when a lot is not worth the labour of sorting, which happens more often than sellers expect.
Send grounding and bonding conductor details
Construction, footage, condition and pickup city. Photographs can follow once a buyer has replied.
Or email saleselectricalbuyers@gmail.com
- No fee and no obligation to sell.
- Written lot terms before anything moves.
- Pickup scheduled around your access rules.