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@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ground Rods
From: David Gilbert <xdavid@cis-broadband.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:35:10 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@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@yahoo.com>
> To:<towertalk@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
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|