At 10:35 PM 7/22/03 -0500, Kelly Taylor wrote:
>One idea that I've had but never checked out, both from a NEC standpoint
>and a lightning-protection standpoint, is drilling the requisite hole in
>the concrete floor (or wood floor, if you're so lucky) and driving a rod
>into the ground below the basement and sealing it back up with concrete
>(or not, if you have a framed wood floor). I'm not sure what impact that
>would have on your weeping tile installation or if it would be
>recommendable from a water-intrusion standpoint, but it was an idea.
I've done that at K8CC. The shack is approximately 12'x18' with four main
operating tables. At each corner of the room, I drilled completely through
the concrete floor and installed an 8' guy rod. Each grounds for each
table go to the nearest ground rod. This is for a
multi-op/multi-transmitter setup, so the multiple grounds don't create
ground loops. When doing single-op with SO2R (you knew I'd get that in
there somewhere :-)) all the gear in use is on one desk, working to a
single ground.
I've never had water entry problems with these ground rods. My property
has good natural drainage. Also, I stayed away from the weep drains.
One nice thing about operating from the basement is that I believe there
are less problems from RF getting into the equipment. I've never had RF in
the stack on HF except once when I had a low 80M dipole over the house. My
nearest tower is 75' away, and I have no problem with computer noise either.
Dave/K8CC
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