[TowerTalk] [TowetTalk] Station and tower grounding

[Bryan Swadener]

You don't need the drilling action. You need the hammer action,
and LOTS of it. Ground rods are only pointed on the bottom end,
and drilling action gives zero benefit.
When I needed to drive several 10' rods in/through Pacific NW
glacial till, I rented a 60# demolition (aka "jack") hammer.
Most rods went right in, in seconds. A couple took a little longer.
One rod took about 5 minutes to bust through some kind of gnarly
rock.

vy 73,
Bryan WA7PRC
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Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 10:40:29 -0600
From: Richard Thorne
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Station and tower grounding

Go rent a hammer drill and purchase a ground rod adapter for installing 
ground rods.

Makes quick work of installing an 8' ground rod.

I had 5 ground rods installed in less than 30 minutes.  We have clay and 
cliche here in the Amarillo panhandle.

Rich - N5ZC

On 12/3/2016 10:07 AM, Jeff Draughn wrote:
> I live in Kansas in an area that has some of the worst clay that I have
> ever had to deal with.
> It's sticky gooey terrible stuff, sticks to everything like epoxy!
> Trying to drive eight-foot ground rods's in the ground is near impossible,
> I think the stickiness just builds to a point where it's near impossible
> even using a 10 pound sledge.
>
> So my question is would several 4 foot rods placed approximately 4 feet
> apart be satisfactory?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts and inputs.
>
> Regards,
> Jeff