[R-390] Grounds

[Cecil Acuff]

In the area where I live there are no stickers that you speak of...

Never seen one.

As a side note do not be fooled into believeing that just because you have a 
good electrical safety ground that you are properly lightning protected. 
The two are not the same...the practices are not the same.

Proper lightning protective grounding systems are expensive and very labor 
intensive...and need to be well planned in advance of installation.

The book Tisha speaks of is the "Bible" of lightning protection.

I just installed a 70' guyed tower and applied all that I knew from the work 
I do with the company I work for as it relates to communications tower/site 
lightning protection.  I spent probably $1000 on ground rods, 2/0 bare 
stranded copper wire, ground kits for the feedlines, ground buss bars, 
CadWeld materials, lightning arrestors, central point ground panel and misc. 
two hole lugs, bolts etc.....  Not to mention the countless hours spent 
trenching, driving the 15 10' 5/8" rods, CadWelding all the connections and 
tying the whole thing back into the house and shop electrical panels.  I was 
luck because I was able to buy most of it at cost through my employer.

At least now if I get popped I can tell my wife and the insurance man that I 
did all could within reason.  That's a whole lot more than was done the last 
time I had a tower up and got popped.  I had a single ground rod driven at 
the base of the tower, clamped to the leg and a wire run in to the shack 
that tied all the equipment chassis together.  Looking back I would have 
been better to have done nothing as I created a serious difference of 
potential between the tower ground and the electrical safety ground and blew 
up everything in the middle not to mention lighting up everything in the 
house 60' from the shop.

Ended up being over $10,000 worth of stuff when all was said and done and 
that was 15 years ago.

I would have loved to run copper strap everywhere but was never able to come 
up with a way to cadweld it to the rods and buss bars with what I had 
available to me.  They don't build substation ground mats out of the stuff 
yet...

Cecil

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Craig C. Heaton" <wd8kdg at worldnet.att.net>
To: "'rbethman'" <rbethman at comcast.net>; <R-390 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 8:17 PM
Subject: Re: [R-390] Grounds


Bob,

Here near the "People's Republic of Eugene, OR", I think the owner can play
with the electrical/wiring in the house and no inspection is needed. But if
someone else or a contractor gets involved, then the local electrical
inspector jumps into the mix.

My home I purchased now has two additional stickers, one when a heat pump
was installed and the other to run a 60 amp service to the shack out back.