I have the equipment to drill a 6 inch hole through just about
anything, what if I placed my grounding rods in concrete or grout?
Would that help or hurt the grounding? I do have a ground resistance
meter I use for work for providing soil resistance values for
grounding communication towers and equipment so I could test it I
suppose, but I usually like to know what I'm getting myself into. I
have seen them drive a steel lathe (about 3/4 inch in diameter) into
slightly weathered bedrock with a post pounder on a bobcat. The
cobbles and boulders just cause it to move a bit to the right or left.
Of course the commercial towers I do the foundation design for
usually have a grounding grid surrounding them. I am tempted to see
if one of the tower engineers will design my grounding system with a
similar system, they tend to suffer little if any damage from
lightening, and being on mountain tops I am sure they are struck quite
often.
Brian
KF7OVD
On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Gary J - N5BAA
<qltfnish@omniglobal.net> wrote:
> Here is an Ebay search for the drill. I have a spline drill as the spline
> bits are the cheapest. SDS-Max is the newest and most expensive.
>
> DeWalt DW530 Rotary Hammer Drill 1-1/2" Spline Drive
>
> Gary J
> N5BAA
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Gary J - N5BAA
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 10:30 AM
> To: Mickey Baker ; D. Drake
>
> Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rod Myths?
>
> I use a BIG DeWalt rotary hammer drill with a 48" x 1 1/8" carbide rock bit.
> I dig a hole down until I hit rock and then bore the hole at the bottom of
> it. Then I drive a piece of 1 inch (1 1/16" OD) copper pipe in the hole
> after I have drilled 1/8" holes in the side of the pipe. Once in the hole I
> fill it with Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate). Supposedly the first 5 feet of
> a ground rod does most of the grounding anyway. The rock drill was
> purchased originally for drilling holes for T-posts. The method works for
> grounding electric fence too.
>
> Gary J
> N5BAA
>
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Mickey Baker
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 10:11 AM
> To: D. Drake
> Cc: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rod Myths?
>
> 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
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> > ---
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>> > http://www.avast.com
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>> > _______________________________________________
>> >
>> >
>> >
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>> >
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>> >
>> >
>>
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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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