I know of more than one homeowner who was planting flowers around the house and ran into the "silly" rod sticking in the ground and had her husband rip it out and clip that wire off. (The good home inspectors look for that -- if a buyer has one do a survey.)
I've also seen older homes where the water pipe was the ground via a strap or clamp on the pipe to a garden bib near the panel, but the water supply pipe rusted through and was replaced with PVC anywhere it contacted the earth. And then there's the ubiquitous Teflon "plumber's tape" and other compounds used on the threads of joints. They sometimes do an excellent job of isolating one section of pipe from the next and possibly the earth. (Used to be a big issue when we commonly used water pipe grounds for RF grounds too.) Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- From: elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Robert Harmon Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 5:08 PM To: Phil Townsend Cc: Elecraft Reflector Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Grounds... I know, I know... its a Dead issue BUT... (no Pun) Phil, My house is about the same vintage. I had the same situation, no ground rod at the service entrance. I put in a ground rod myself. It may or may not have had an adequate ground before but I figured putting in a redundant ground with the ground rod would be a good idea, plus it brings it up to current code requirements. Bob K6UJ On Apr 6, 2011, at 8:44 AM, Phil Townsend wrote: > I really hate to bring it up again... But hear me out: > > My A/C service entrance does not have a ground rod. > My house was built about 25 years ago.' > I pulled the service front panel and found the following: > All the grounds and neutrals are bonded to the metal chassis as they are supposed to be. > But there is no wire for a connection to a ground ROD! > It looks like they used a solid metal pipe that houses the big A/C wire inside of this pipe. > This pipe IS connected to the service entrance by some metal gland nuts. > The 2 1/2" pipe goes outside of the house and is buried underground. It goes off to a transformer that is about 100 yards away. > So my question: > IS this pipe MY Ground rod? > > > Don't follow > My Tweets > http://twitter.com/PhilTownsend ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
