[TowerTalk] Ground Rod Plating

[Byron Tatum]

Hello-    Possibly someone here may know answers, I would like to know about this. I had a 110' 45G tower up for about 8 years located about halfway between Houston and Galveston, TX. I had 6 x 10' copper clad steel ground rods down, interconnected with #2 solid copper wire. Soil was the gumbo as they call it. There were 2 rods going out from each tower leg under guy wire pattern. I used Cadweld One-Shots to attach #2 wire to ground rods. When I moved to this new QTH in East Texas I jacked the rods out of the ground and salvaged as much of the #2 wire as I could. All of the 6 ground rods had a grayish-white appearing crusty coating stuck on them, it was worse in the top 4' of the rods. Appears some form of mineral deposits. I used sandpaper to get it off but underneath the crusty outer part, up against copper, the material was plated onto the copper and took some work to get it sanded off. Appears I suffered no loss of copper cladding thickness.   Just curious what the material is, I assume it is same minerals that show up in hard water. Even more curious about, when a ground rod gets coated like this, does it suffer any loss of its performance?Thanks,Byron W5FH