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-6/205167514
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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