[TowerTalk] Re: Ground rod material

[Pete Smith]

At 03:13 PM 1/29/03 -0500, Barry wrote:
>Home Depot has both copper and galv grounds rods. The galv rods are
>several dollars cheaper. I installed about 1/2 of each when I did the
>ground field for my tower (3 rods each leg, cadwelds, etc.) I haven't
>had the opportunity to dig any of them up to see which decay more
>slowly.


For whatever it's worth, I recall threads here in past years recounting 
concern about galvanic corrosion involving copper-plated ground rods and 
the galvanized coating on Rohn guy wire anchor rods.  There are reports 
(mainly from a company that specializes in sacrificial cathodes to prevent 
such problems) of guy anchor rods corroding through as a result of this 
phenomenon.  My suspicion is that this would only be a problem if you have 
copper ground rods relatively close to your guy anchors.  I had grounded 
guys, so I replaced the guy ground rods with galvanized ones.


73, Pete N4ZR
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