[TenTec] Making a new house "radio friendly"

[Mark Erbaugh]

Greetings,

My wife and I are having a new house built. I'm looking for suggestions for
things that I can do (or have done) during construction to help with setting
up my ham station at the new house. We have almost 4 acres and I am looking
forward to having a real 'antenna farm.'  I think I've decided on the tower
/ (initial) antenna setup. I want to use a Glenn Martin 70' tower with Hazer
as I want to be able to work on the antenna with both feet firmly planted on
terra firma. I plan on using a Force 12 5BA for 20 - 10 m. I currently have
a Force 12 C4S and really like the construction and performance. I'm not
sure about 40 - currently the C4S has a rotatable diope element, I would
loose that with the 5BA. For 80 and 160, I'm thinking a trapped dipole
installed as an inverted vee from the tower.  I've got enough real estate
for a full length 160 antenna.

The areas I'm looking for ideas with are grounding and getting the cables /
wires from the house to the antenna. The shack will definitely be in the
basement.  I and considering burying some ground rods under the basement
floor before the floor is poured. That way, I would have an extremely short
RF ground (which is good, right?). However, I don't know if that is a good
idea. I'm wondering why the electric service is always grounded outside the
house instead of through the basement floor.  Also, this house will have a
septic system an leach field, which I understand will consist of about 2000'
feet of buried plastic pipe. I'm considering burying some wire for ground or
counter poise radials purposes along with the pipe. I'm not sure which. I'm
currently not contemplating a vertical antenna, but I hate to pass up the
opportunity to get some wire in the ground. If I use the leach field as a
counterpoise, I would probably want to bury insulated wire, but if I use it
as a ground, I'd want uninsulated wire. If I bury either insulated or
uninsulated, I can envision that the copper will be in a pretty nasty
environment (moisture, salts and bacteria), are there steps that I can take
to keep it from corroding away?

What's the best way to get signals in and out of the house and leave me room
for expansion. I am looking forward to playing with different antennas and
hope to make it easy to run new wires, etc. The basement walls will be
poured concrete. I'm thinking of having them embedd some PVC pipe during the
pour to serve as sleeves for smaller diameter pipe and conduit which will
eventually be run to the base of the tower.  Not wanting overkill, but
wanting room for expansion, what size pipe should I use? I plan on using an
antenna switch at the tower; which will reduce the number of coax runs.  I
know it's not a good idea to run electrical service in the same pipe as my
coax, so I will bury a conduit for that.  I don't think I 'need' 120V at the
tower, but I think it would be nice to have - especially for powering tools
when working at the tower.  What about control lines for my rotator and
antenna switch? I suspect that these will be 12 or 24 VDC. Can these be
safely run in the pipe with the coax or in the conduit with the 120V? Or do
I need a separate conduit for them.

Also, should I run the coax / eletrical underground all the way to the
basement from the tower, or should I bring it above ground near the house
and then go back underground?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and 73,
Mark, N8ME


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