ESD-mat, should I ground it in the house?

[Calby]

(Please only people that know what there are talking about should answer, thanks.)

Hi everyone,
People are saying different things regarding this with ESD and it's driving me nuts.
Some things I do understand, but the thing that I can't figure out now is if I should connect the ESD-mat to my house grounding.
Some people says that it's not needed and that I should just connect the mat to the computer and to my wrist as I only need to have the same level (grounding) as the computer and therefore I don't need to connect it to my houses grounding.
An other people are telling me that I need to connect to my houses grouding because it wont work if I do it and my component are in danger for ESD.

So now I have connected it like this:
ESD-Mat to my computer (don't know if it's the best place to connect it in the computer, it's hard as it's a laptop)
ESD-Mat to my wrist troug ha ESD-wristband.

I'm putting my ESD-safe tools on the mat all the time before and during when I'm screwing in my laptop.
I put the component package in 30sec before I'm opening it so that it 'll have the same level of energi as the rest of the things.

Is this the right way to do it? Or should I also ground it in my houses grounding?

 

[trents]

You are making this more difficult than it needs to be.

First, the danger to components from static discharge is very small unless your environment has a propensity to create static electricity to begin with. When you walk across the room and touch the door knob do you get a jolt? If not it's not an issue.

Second, even if your environment generates high amounts of static electricity all you need to do is touch something that is grounded with your finger to discharge it after you sit down to work on the components. Easiest thing would be to take an old three prong extension cord and clip off the two flat blades even with the plug and leave the round third prong in place on the wall socket side. the round one is the ground wire. Cut the other end of the extension cord (the female plug) off with a set of diagonal pliers and then strip the outside insulation back from around the three wires. Then strip the insulation back from the green colored wire which is the ground. When you sit down just touch that bare wire to discharge the static from your body before working on the computer components. Or, you could clip the ESD to the bare end of that green wire.

 

[Suppressor1137]

the safest method is to ground to house. that said, As long as the case has the psu in and wire plugged in, and attached to an outlet, the case works just as well.