[TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding connection to tower legs

[Gene Smar]

TT:

     When I worked for the local electric utility in PA we used stranded 4/0 galvanized steel wire as our ground conductors from substation structures and fences posts onto a buried mat of the same conductor material.  Fence gates used galvanized braid of some significant size to connect to the ground mat.  No one wanted to steal that stuff and the gauge was needed to safely handle 100k+ Amps of 60 Hz fault current.  

     When I worked on a cellular phone project in Haiti in the late 90s, the cells sites included solid copper ground conductors (gauge unknown) and 7/24 armed guards.  Reportedly they had problems with stolen diesel generator fuel, too.  

     Finally, I've read about some wireless operators painting the visible copper ground leads emerging from inside the equipment huts with bitumen to make them less obvious/attractive to the casual observer.

     FWIW.


73 de
Gene Smar  AD3F


-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Wes Stewart
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 2:58 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Grounding connection to tower legs

That's what is used around here.  The problem is with the prevalent thievery of copper wire, our power co-op uses aluminum from near ground level to the top of the pole.  They use a crimped connection, often overdone, and I've seen them where one wire (usually the aluminum one) breaks right at the crimp and then is a potential noise source.  The aluminum wire is attached to the pole with staples.  I've seen them driven so deeply that they cut the wire in two.

At one time when I was having a lot of power line noise they tried using barbed staples that someone sold them on.  These were copper plated steel and the copper eventually disappeared and left rusty steel behind.  Furthermore in the AZ WX with RH near zero sometimes, the poles shrink and the staples loosen anyway.

Wes  N7WS

  On 10/17/2017 9:22 AM, David Robbins wrote:
> That wire wrapped around the butt end of the utility pole is amazingly 
> called a 'butt wrap' and is a common method of installing a ground at 
> the base of a pole, there is no extra hardware, no driving a ground 
> rod next to the pole which degrades its effectiveness anyway, and no 
> maintenance of another junction.  Also the size of the ground is much 
> bigger than a simple rod.  Note though that it is probably a better 
> power fault ground than a single rod, but maybe not much better for lightning.
>
> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
> web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net:7373
>

_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk