Feb 25, 2008

How to get grounds rods into the ground.....and out again.....














Getting a ground rod in the ground is fairly easy.
We use 22mm dia, 2m length copper pipe.

Hammer it down
Put an so called 'end-cap' on the pipe and use a BIG hammer.
Con: bit difficult to keep it straight and it gets heavier after 1m50

Hammer-drill it down
Use an electric drill, connect a large chisel and hammer-drill it down on top of the end cap.
This is by far the best method till a depth of max 3m.

Use a waterhose
By help of the waterpressure you can get it deeper than 3m quite easily.
con: the electrical contact to ground is worse as the pipe now 'floats' in water. Although in time that wil surely get better as the surrounding soil sinks in again.


Now pull the thing out again
OK, you have the rod installed but now the YL wants it have removed from the lawn.
The above pictures show the removal of two copper rods at the house of Rens, PA3FGA +YL(see pic).
The first time we started digging a hole of 1m20 deep and from there on went 10cm deeper each time.
Only at 1m50 depth and using the home made lever, we were succesfull to pull out the final 50cm of the 2m copper rod. And we had to put all our bodyweight at the long end of the lever to get it out milimeter by milimeter......



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