[Elecraft] Grounds... I know, I know... its a Dead issue BUT... (no Pun)

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

Hi Ron,

My favorite is my elder son's first house, an elegant small 1920's
dwelling that still had a lot of vintage wiring, which would exhibit
strange lamp intensity changes. The short version of the story is that
it used the iron natural gas line as "ground", and that was connected
from the main fuse panel in the house.  There simply was no external
power ground, in spite of the fact it had been "inspected" by
registered inspector as part of buying the house.

The power company told us to turn off the power to the houise, undo
the connection to the gas pipe immediately and were out there the same
day to install a code power entrance ground.

When they had finished, not only had the power ground been missing,
but the neutral from the pole was excessively resistive, and they had
to replace the drop from the pole.  Among other things this had been
driving DirecTV nuts, as the antenna had a ground from beneath the
antenna which would have been carrying the neutral imbalance.

There was a long list of wierdnesses that disappeared after the power
company fixed the ground and the neutral.

Power grounding is not to be messed with.  Best to argue, read, argue,
and then finally understand.  Unless we have checked ours out
ourselves from an advantage of informed competence, we are at the
mercy of whatever left my son without a ground and a neutral.

73, Guy.

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Ron D'Eau Claire <ron at cobi.biz> wrote:
> 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.)