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[TowerTalk] RE: Ground Rods - Steel or Copper Clad Steel?

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Subject: [TowerTalk] RE: Ground Rods - Steel or Copper Clad Steel?
From: n4zr@contesting.com (Pete Smith)
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 15:41:22 -0400
At 03:21 PM 9/29/1999 EDT, K7LXC@aol.com wrote:
>
>In a message dated 29/09/99 14:20:04 EST, you write:
>
>> Thanks to all for the help in choosing the right type of ground rod.
>
>     What was it and why? Interested TowerTalkians want to know.
>

Here's what I told him....

Depends -- Some people claim that if you use a copper clad ground rod for
guy wire grounding near a galvanized anchor, you risk galvanic corrosion of
the zinc coating on the anchors, leading in turn to risk of anchor failure
through rusting of the steel.  For that reason, I use galvanized rods at my
guy anchors.  On the other hand, I use the copper clad rods for the base
grounding of my tower because I have no galvanized steel in the ground
there, but the ground wires for the tower are copper.  That way, in theory
I will have no corrosion at the joint between the rod and the ground wire.

A way to avoid the dissimilar metals corrosion in the latter case, if you
can only get steel rods,  would be to use stainless steel intermediate
strips between the copper and the galvanized material.



73,  Pete N4ZR
Sometimes a tower is just a tower

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