TL;DR
A bonding screw is the green-headed screw supplied with panelboards and certain equipment that, when driven, connects the neutral bar to the metal enclosure, establishing the single neutral-to-ground bond a service requires. The rule that makes it matter is placement: installed at the main service disconnect, removed everywhere else, because a bonded subpanel puts normal neutral current on conduits, water pipes, and equipment frames.
What it means
A bonding screw is the green-headed screw supplied with panelboards and certain equipment that, when driven, connects the neutral bar to the metal enclosure, establishing the single neutral-to-ground bond a service requires. The rule that makes it matter is placement: installed at the main service disconnect, removed everywhere else, because a bonded subpanel puts normal neutral current on conduits, water pipes, and equipment frames. Manufacturers ship it loose in a bag or backed out for this reason. Checking whether it is correctly installed or correctly absent is a standard step in panel inspections and generator interlock work.
Where it sits in the glossary
Bonding screw is part of the Trade jargon group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
License: CC-BY-4.0 — quote freely with attribution to ProFix Editorial Team / ProFix Directory.