In article ,
I moved to Mexico last November, and I finally got my gear down here.
It seems that most houses down here are not built with a ground plug
for the electrical outlets. I'm in a newly constructed house, and
that's the case here. I started looking around, and indeed, they had
never even put in a ground rod where the power comes into the house. I
found where the ground wire was sticking out through the the exterior
wall, but no rod. I went and bought a ground rod today, and I'll hook
that up tomorrow.

This is essential and keeps you from dying. Follow the NEC rules and get
it as close to the service entry panel as possible. Make sure there is
a loop in the service entry line to act as a common-mode choke against
lightning, too.

I had a construction guy in here yesterday, who told me that in cases
like this, people just run a ground to a portion of the house, like
the metal door frames, or window frames. That sounds like a disaster
waiting to happen to me.

Yes, I could see people doing that in Mexico. You know, there are a lot
of electrical fires in Mexico, too.

My question is this. Do I need to somehow ground to the same rod
outside where the power comes in, in order to prevent ground loops or
other problems? I can do that, it would just be a little ackward.

The ground rod ties to the service entry. The internal house wiring
also MUST have an external steel shield (BX type), or a third ground
wire (Romex type) in order to carry ground from the service entry panel
to each outlet.

For audio gear it would be good to have a couple home run lines directly
from the panel to outlets, with "isolated ground" so that the ground line
from the plug to the panel is not shared by any other outlets.

Another option would be to knock away the plaster, and tie into one of
the steel rods in a corner pillar. This is something else the
construction guy said is common.

Please advise as to what I should do. Any any response from me might
take a while, as I'm posting through Google.

Hire an outside electrician who knows what he is doing. Electrocution is
not good. You only have to smell burning hair once in your life to
understand the value of proper grounding.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."