Would we like to talk about water jetting a ground rod down? One first punches a hole in the ground with the ground rod. Don't be too aggressive and get it stuck. Then fill the hole with water and punch the rod up and down untill it becomes difficult pull the rod out and add more water. Repeating this will really suprise you how far down one can get a rod and never use the sledge hammer. There is of course some variances in soil, but water is pretty cheap and you don't have to get a ladder. This can also work for steel posts. Ron ----- Original Message ----- From: Tom Fowle To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 3:49 AM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] electrical safety when plumbing with plastic
As Dale suggests, there are places where you can't drive an 8 foot rod deep enough, My colleague Bill Gerrey lives in a section of San Francisco where there is a layer of serpentine rock maybe 4 feet below the surface of the ground, and apparrently it's nearly impossible to get through. A friend tried to drive a ground rod through it for ham antenna safety purposes and when they hit the rock the sledge nearly bounced back in his face because the rod just wouldn't go down further. don't know what the code requires for electrical grounding in that case, probably a number of shorter rods. to drive a rod that's taller than you are without a ladder, you use a large chunk of pipe with a cap on one end. You stand the rod where you want it, put the capped pipe over the top and stand next it. You raise the capped pipe with one hand while holding the rod further down with the other, and let the pipe fall on top the rod. Starts slow, and takes a while in hard ground, but beats sledging from top of a ladder. Of course after you get down a ways, you have to switch to a sledge because the pipe hits the earth. tom Net-Tamer V 1.13 Beta - Registered [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
