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More grounding fun! The final :)

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LAN_403

Killa-X

Sun Jun 07 2009, 09:06PM

Registered Member #1643 Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039

As you might remember me posting a grounding thread in the past. I now Have a rod. There's a few things though.

That's how my backyard is set. My window, Is under my deck. As you can see, it's a slope. and there's a blue tarp under the deck. This is to keep the rocks in place and not sink. Would this effect my grounding?

* Should I move my rod to the ? point..Where it's grass and no tarp? I was able to push my rod 4ft in by hand, and the rest of the foot was hammered (under the deck)

----The story of testing.
I took a AM radio transmitter. No ground = solid static transmitting. I put it on the house ground, you hear clear music. Put it on my deck-ground-rod, You hear music, but with a lower quality. I put water on it and noticed no real change. My rod is a solid hunk of copper however. Should I consider moving it?

That's my current clamp and setup of my rod. Now, I noticed it's wrong. I did NOT coil my wire around and then clamp it. I just took of 2 inches of coating, Placed it straight down the pipe, and clamped it. As these clamps are build to squeeze the end wire to death.

* Would coiling it even really change it?
* Should I move the location of my rod?
* I'm still using strand 16awg extension wire for connecting. Should I use something else?
* Do I just lay the wire on the pipe? No drilling, no solder, etc?

Plasma Lover

Sun Jun 07 2009, 09:23PM

Registered Member #1911 Joined: Mon Jan 05 2009, 06:30PM
Location: Salem, Oregon, USA
Posts: 165

Other than ease of access, the point at which your ground rod is hammered into earth has very little bearing on its grounding properties.

My recommendation is to keep the rod where it is, coil the wire around the rod and then clamp it, so that you're sure you're getting a very solid connection, and then clamp it on.

If you were to drill a hole into the rod, and then solder it in place or fill the hole with solder, other than the copper, that would probably get you a better connection, but the clamp will work fine for the first, say, eighty years. At that point you likely won't be living there and the copper rod will have rusted in the ground enough that it will have issues grounding at that point.

Proud Mary

Sun Jun 07 2009, 11:14PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Move it to the bottom of the slope, son. Then water draining that way can only help improve conductivity. It may not improve it at all, but it could.

It's also possible that your house has been built up on a platform of rubble, and what we in England call 'hardcore' (no....) sand and so on, which would be a poor conductor.

If you are able to do so, putting out some radials from the main earth can only help - long bare copper wires stretching out as far as you can in every direction from the copper rod - Even if you can bury them only a few inches.

HV Enthusiast

Mon Jun 08 2009, 07:41PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Plasma Lover wrote ...

At that point you likely won't be living there and the copper rod will have rusted in the ground enough that it will have issues grounding at that point.

Copper doesn't rust.
The internal steel inside most commercial ground rods may rust, but copper itself doesn't rust. It will oxidize however.

Plasma Lover

Tue Jun 09 2009, 12:29AM

Registered Member #1911 Joined: Mon Jan 05 2009, 06:30PM
Location: Salem, Oregon, USA
Posts: 165

Dr. GigaVolt wrote ...

Plasma Lover wrote ...

At that point you likely won't be living there and the copper rod will have rusted in the ground enough that it will have issues grounding at that point.

Copper doesn't rust.
The internal steel inside most commercial ground rods may rust, but copper itself doesn't rust. It will oxidize however.

When people speak of oxidizing metal, in my experience, they speak of it rusting and not, as they should, oxidizing. I admit that you are correct, but we may as well call it rust for ease of language.

My own $.02

Killa-X

Tue Jun 09 2009, 06:43AM

Registered Member #1643 Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039

Dr. GigaVolt wrote ...

Copper doesn't rust.
The internal steel inside most commercial ground rods may rust, but copper itself doesn't rust. It will oxidize however.

Eh..Thing is for a tiny 5ft grounding rod (our soil here is extremely moist even 1ft down) it was 21 dollars because it is solid copper. I for the hell of it cut a notch in the top about 1cm down and it was sill all copper, no steel was found. The weird thing is that the top is gray color, But when I smashed it down with a hammer, most of that gray turned to copper..

Proud Mary

Tue Jun 09 2009, 06:59AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Killa-X wrote ...

Dr. GigaVolt wrote ...

Copper doesn't rust.
The internal steel inside most commercial ground rods may rust, but copper itself doesn't rust. It will oxidize however.

Well, 21 dollars a pop or not, you have to increase the surface area of contact with the ground to lower resistance further. For example, it is common to have two, three, or more Earth rods wired in parallel. a few feet apart.

Still better is a copper plate at least 60 x 60 cm buried as deep as you can, if you think about the surface area of contact. There is no absolute reason the metal should be copper. Some large installations use Earth connections made out of re-bar - the webs of steel rod used in reinforced concrete.

The reason some Earth rods have a steel interior is so that they can be hammered into the ground without bending over. Pure copper is soft stuff, and will never make it through stony ground without buckling and splitting.

The grey discolouration you speak of sounds like oxidation, or chemical attack of some kind.

Finally, the Earthing of radio frequencies is a very different thing to the Earthing of DC, since the length of the Earth wire may represent a considerable impedance at the frequency of interest. In the worst case, as you'll see, were the Earth wire one quarter of a wavelength long, it would actually act as an RF choke, and prevent the passage of RF to ground - the very opposite of what was intended.

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