I really don't understand why people pay for grounding so much

Humans are natural capacitors. We are a bag of electrolyte (salty blood) in dielectric (skin), albeit not very efficient ones. therefore, to safely trip GFCIs (those outlets in your kitchen/bathroom with the pop out buttons) in case of a fault (current going through human), you need at least as much capacitance to trip the circuit balance.

The human body capacitance to a far ground is 100-200 pF, which is really a minimum value. This correlates to an impedance of about 13 megohms at 60 Hz, which corresponds to a minimum of 9 uA at 120 VAC to ground.

But if you are wet, that impedance plummets.

You need about 5 mA to trip a gfci.

You might be able to make a "floating ground" using a 4.7 mF capacitor, and it might trip in case of fault, if you are bone dry.

or, just run a copper spike into da urf.

/r/OSHA Thread Parent Link - i.imgur.com