Believe it or not, we have rocks in Florida, too.
I use a 1/2" hammer drill, applied to the top of the rod with an old deep
socket. Unless I hit a boulder, it works very quickly, there's lots of
ground rod surface area in compressed contact with the earth and there's no
mud!
73,
Mickey
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 11:00 AM, D. Drake <daleaa1qd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Here at my station in New DurHAM, New HAMpshire
> on Middleton Rd (off of HAM Road) I have very
> rocky soil. I tried the garden hose trick and
> found it was not a good method in this soil
> although it worked quite well in the clay soil at
> my old QTH in Dover, NH.
>
> I also use a fence post driver like W4WEG but I
> also lubricate the rod with liquid dish soap to
> reduce the friction and it makes driving a lot
> easier. About 20% of the time I hit a big enough
> rock that I have to pull the rod out and start
> over. The soap also makes it a bit easier to pull
> the rod out in those cases. Driving the rod in at
> angle really does nothing to avoid the rocks.
>
> In the literature I have read on grounding it
> mentions using salt to increase ground
> conductivity but also says that it's a temporary
> effect and unless you keep "salting" it
> periodically there's little to gain by doing it
> once and just salting near the surface will have
> little effect for most of the length of the rod.
> I assume the time that the effect lasts depends on
> soil moisture content and how quickly that
> moisture moves through the ground around it
> dissipating the salt.
>
> Dale, AA1QD
>
>
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 16:08:57 -0500
> From: "Bill Grimwood" <bill@grimwood.net>
> To: "'Patrick Greenlee'"
> <patrick_g@windstream.net>,
> <towertalk@contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rod Myths?
> Message-ID: <001d01cf5f38$3df35c00$b9da1400$@net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> I use a metal fence post driver to drive ground
> rods. It works real well.
>
>
> Bill, W4WEG
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TowerTalk
> [mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On
> Behalf Of
> Patrick Greenlee
> Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 2:32 PM
> To: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rod Myths?
>
> I used galvanized water pipe in place of EMT for
> water-drilling a hole
> for a ground rod. I put a "T" at the top of the
> pipe and cut the bottom
> end of the pipe at an angle like a hypodermic
> needle. One side of the T
> is screwed onto the male threads on the pipe and
> the adapter to join a
> water hose to a galvanized pipe is screwed onto
> the horizontal part of
> the T. The top part of the T gets a cap. You can
> tap on the cap with a
> hammer to help get through hard spots. The ID of
> the pipe needs to be
> larger than the OD of the rod. You may want to
> fill the pipe with Epsom
> Salts before starting to increase conductivity in
> the ground near the
> rod. You can refill the pipe with Epsom Slats by
> removing the T
> temporarily during the process.
>
> The same setup (less the Epsom Salts) can be used
> to "drill" under a
> sidewalk for things like placing a ground radial.
>
> I have a "demo hammer" (miniature electric jack
> hammer) and have
> fashioned a "tool bit" for it that is a concave
> cup. This combo will
> drive in a 8 ft ground rod where a sledge hammer
> couldn't (rod would
> bend.) Two or three lengths of pipe, say 1, 2, and
> 3-4 ft with ID a
> little greater than the OD of the ground rod will
> keep the ground rod
> from bending when delivering really robust
> sledgehammer blows. Start
> with the longer pipe and as the rod is driven
> change to shorter ones.
> The pipe keeps the rod from bending under the
> blows of the sledge. I
> have not needed the pipe "exoskeleton" when
> driving with the demo
> hammer, just with the sledge.
>
> When driving is just about impossible with a
> sledge I have found that
> the demo hammer will git 'er done, albeit
> sometimes slowly. Digging out
> a little funnel shape at the surface and pouring
> in water usually makes
> the driving easier and faster but not always.
> Epsom Salts in this little
> funnel shape will increase your ground
> conductivity. The above comments
> are not necessarily appropriate in all cases,
> especially where the sub
> surface structure is essentially solid rock.
>
> Of course YMMV!
>
> Patrick NJ5G
>
>
>
> .
> On 4/23/2014 12:49 PM, Jon Pearl - W4ABC wrote:
> > Hi Gary,
> >
> > I used this method a few years back and found
> that it worked very
> > quickly.
> >
> > If you use an appropriately sized female garden
> hose repair coupler,
> > such as
> >
> http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ray-Padula-Metal-5-8-in
> -Garden-Hose-Female-Thread
> -Repair-with-Stainless-Steel-Clamps-RP-RIFR-6/2051
> 67514
> > and pound it into a piece of appropriately sized
> EMT, you'll have the
> > all that you need. I (lightly) held the EMT in
> a vice and inserted
> > the nipple end of the coupler into the EMT. I
> inserted a ratchet
> > socket into the female hose end of the coupler
> and used a hammer to
> > tap the back of the socket so as to drive the
> nipple end into the EMT.
> >
> > To install the ground rod, you simply turn on
> the water supply and
> > start driving the 10' stick of EMT into the soil
> till you reach the
> > desired depth. Turn off the water supply,
> remove the EMT and drop
> > your ground rod. Once I had the rods at the
> desired depth, I once
> > again used water to back fill some of the soil
> that was pushed up out
> > of the hole by the water. Since I'm in central
> Florida & the soil is
> > pretty sandy, I found that refilling the hole
> around the ground rod
> > works pretty well as there's a lot of resistance
> by the ground rod to
> > being pulled back out by hand after back
> filling.
> >
> > I just took a picture of a 1/2" ground rod
> sitting along side a 10'
> > piece of 1/2" EMT with the female repair coupler
> attached and I placed
> > it on my web site at
> http://www.w4abc.com/hydrogroundrod.html
> >
> >
> >
> > 73,
> >
> >
> > Jon Pearl - W4ABC
> > www.w4abc.com
> >
> >
> > On 4/23/2014 9:22 AM, Gary Smith wrote:
> >> I used to live in NE Illinois and in southern
> Louisiana and that's
> >> exactly how I did my long grounding rods. No
> stones at all to run
> >> into. Here in Connecticut it took a lot of
> effort to find exact
> >> placement for my HI-Z Rx array, the soil is one
> big rock with a thin
> >> surface layer dirt on top. Get a few inches
> down & hit solid.
> >>
> >> 73,
> >>
> >> Gary
> >> KA1J
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > ---
> > This email is free from viruses and malware
> because avast! Antivirus
> > protection is active.
> > http://www.avast.com
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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> talk
> >
> >
>
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> End of TowerTalk Digest, Vol 136, Issue 76
> ******************************************
>
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--
Mickey Baker, N4MB
Fort Lauderdale, FL
*“Tell me, and I will listen. Show me, and I will understand. Involve me,
and I will learn.” *Teton Lakota, American Indian Saying.
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