[TowerTalk] Ground Rods

[john at kk9a.com]

This summer I installed 10 ground rods in my red clay , shale, quartz, etc. 
ground.  I got almost no where with a sledge hammer and had to resort to 
using a jack hammer to pound them in.  Even with this machine, many only 
went in 6-7 feet deep.   At my P40A station I was never able to drive in 
ground rods by hand more than a few feet deep.   Those that say it is easy 
to drive in ground rods have never tried it in hard soil conditions.

John KK9A / 4




To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rods
From: David Gilbert <xdavid at cis-broadband.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:35:10 -0700
List-post: <towertalk at contesting.com">mailto:towertalk at contesting.com>

I think there is danger in generalizing.  I live in very rocky terrain
(check out my tower installation pics at ab7e.com) and if I'm lucky I
can get about 75% of four foot rods to go in all the way no matter what
I pound them in with.  Even then virtually all of them take a "skew
path."  Eight foot rods have a 100% chance of stopping on a large chunk
of granite before they get even close to being all the way in.  I
suspect other hams in other locations have similar issues.

My only recourse was to put in more rods to ground my tower, and I built
my own exothermic mold (standard type, not One-Shot variety) and bought
a bunch of Cadweld powder on eBay so I could make as many wire-to-rod
connections as I needed.  The biggest reservation I have is that I'm
less likely to reach moist earth during our dry springtime with the
shorter rods, but that's just something I have to live with.  No storms
then anyway ...

73,
Dave   AB7E




On 11/30/2010 11:10 AM, Mark Robinson wrote:
> I put in 10 foot copper clad 5/8 ground rods around my tower. Most of them
> went in pretty easily..
>
> Mark N1UK
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dan Bookwalter"<n8dcj at yahoo.com>
> To:<towertalk at contesting.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, 30 November, 2010 12:43 PM
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Ground Rods
>
>
>> Ok , i have seen several discussions regarding what people are using for
>> ground
>> rods.... some use actual 5/8" ground rods , while others use 1/2" copper
>> pipe ,
>> thoughts on which is better ?
>>
>> also i was thinking about using 4ft ground rods instead of 8 footers , 
>> but
>> use
>> twice as many of them , it is much easier to drive the 4 footers  ,
>> thoughts ?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Dan N8DCJ