Topband: Earth conductivity

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

Almost nobody has highly conductive dirt. On average it tends not to
be good for much agriculturally or for supporting buildings. In the
EZNEC table for dirt characteristics used in approximating real
ground, a conductivity of 5 S/m is assigned for salt water.  The
"best" common dirt, labeled as "Very Good; pastoral, rich, central US"
only has a conductivity of .03 S/m.  I would suspect that a prior
poster's salt marsh dirt is up into or near single digits S/m even
when it's merely damp.

On the other hand "Average: pastoral, heavy clay" is assigned a
conductivity of .005 S/m.

My 99% gut guess for you is no problem.

73, Guy.

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Gary Hinson <Gary at isect.com> wrote:
>> Beverages don't work as well over salt water, or very highly
>> conductive earth, and that's just physics, not poor construction.
>
> Talking of that, any idea how conductive my soil might be?  It's about 12" of topsoil on a clay
> base, the depth of which exceeds any holes I have yet dug.  It's the sort of solid Real Man's Clay I
> could probably lever out with a spade, leave to dry in the sun, and build a house from.  If they's
> have asked me, I'd have offered to make the heat-refractive tiles for the space shuttle from it.