Posted: 6/18/2014 6:27:26 PM EDT
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Planning my antenna now and I know it's supposed to be ground and bonded with the ground rod at the house electrical at the service plane. Here's my issue. My house has two service entrances and two different meters. Which one do I bond with? I talked to the people who built the house and they travelled and would pull one meter for long periods. Just from casual observation it's hit or miss as to what room and equipment goes with what meter and panel. One entrance and ground rod is about 150' from my antenna and the other about 225'. So you can see right off I gotta buy a decent chunk of change for ground wire. |
| I agree with Foxxz completely. I have to also say that I've never heard of such an electrical nightmare. I could understand if the house once had split electrical service because it was two apartments or a duplex or something, but random feeds from two service entrance panels and utility meters is beyond odd. Would be interesting to hear the back story behind that. |
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Quoted: I agree with Foxxz completely. I have to also say that I've never heard of such an electrical nightmare. I could understand if the house once had split electrical service because it was two apartments or a duplex or something, but random feeds from two service entrance panels and utility meters is beyond odd. Would be interesting to hear the back story behind that. They built the house that way on purpose. I have a 3rd meter for my shop as well. It's actually cheaper here in rural America in a lot of places to get the co-op to run wire and a transformer/meter to your shop and pay the $7 minimum wach month than it is to pay to have either above ground or below ground wiring run to the shop. So most people let the co-op do it and have a meter at the shop. Here it's MUCH cheaper to let the power co-op do the lne/transformer and meter than pay X amount per foot for a couple of hundred feet of service. They wanted to be able to pull the meter when they traveled, sometimes up to 6 months at a time, and leave the other meter on. Most of the stuff is split 50/50 in relation to which end of the house it is on, but not all. House was built brand new in 1989 and that included all electrical service, both halves of the house and the shop. I could tie them both together or just place my equipment on a circuit/in a room that's closer to the ground rod to the antenna. |
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Quoted:
One entrance and ground rod is about 150' from my antenna and the other about 225'. That far away from the antenna, neither of those "grounds" is going to look like much of an RF ground. Have you considered installing a dedicated ground rod, just for the antenna? |
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Quoted: That far away from the antenna, neither of those "grounds" is going to look like much of an RF ground. Have you considered installing a dedicated ground rod, just for the antenna? Quoted: Quoted: One entrance and ground rod is about 150' from my antenna and the other about 225'. That far away from the antenna, neither of those "grounds" is going to look like much of an RF ground. Have you considered installing a dedicated ground rod, just for the antenna? Was planning on putting in a ground rod at the entanna and running #2 wire to the ground rod at the service entrance to bond them together fpr lightning protection. But I'm open to suggestions. It's a SV9 and I will have approximately 32 radials on the ground approximately 55' long for RF ground. Regardless because I've had previous issues (not at this house) in a high lightning strike area here that I plan on disconnecting the feed cable at both ends, and removing the cable off of the ground radials when not in use. In fact being my first antenna and the number of lightning strikes we have here I picked it because it would be easy to remove/move. Besides coming down for hurricanes and tropical storms I have room in my shop to take it down and not collapse. Just disconnect it, pick it up off the pipe and haul it over to the shop and put it there without having to collapse it. My 60' tower (not using it this time for this antenna) was placed here when the house was built in 1989 and it's not grounded at all. It's right next to one of the service entrance ground rods so I can fix that. The TV antenna at the top of the tower is grounded and it's coming down next week. I know from first hand experience even if it gets on the electrical system it may not find ground thru the ground rod, happend to me twice. The first time it struck right at the eave of the house and got on the electrical system in the attic. It blew out the sophit on the opposite end of the house just above the meter and ground. Apparently it didnt care for our ground and made it 150' thru underground service to the ground mounted transformer where it apparently found a ground but not before blowing a panel off of it and causing it to leak in short order. The other it struck a tree at the corner of the house and arced over to a floodlight on the house. Went thru the entire house and then out to the shop where it found ground by arcing from a light switch to an intercom that wasn't connected but the connection wire went thru the wall/foor and stoppoed about 6" from the ground. It totally destroyed the paneling between the two. I have lots of respect for lightning. |
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Having two or more electrical service entries in one home isn't that unusual. My current home has one main service entry (one meter), but there was a major addition and I have two main services (breaker boxes).
It's funny how people talk about "single point grounds" for the station, but the next thing you know we've got ground rods everywhere. FWIW I've never tried to tie in my station ground with the electrical service ground. In every case the run was in excess of 100ft. It just didn't seem worth it. For grounding I use 6AWG copper stranded from the station bus bar to a dedicated, conveniently located, ground rod. 6AWG is good enough for utility pole lightning protection so it's good enough for me! I put the antenna lighting protection onto that ground rod as well. At the actual station location (in the shack) I use a standard ground/neutral bus bar to aggregate 6AWG from each piece of equipment. The 6AWG is attached to each piece of equipment by using a standard ground lug. Antenna lead not connected yet: 
Old photo, the new install is nicer, but you get the idea: 
Typical: 
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Quoted:
Was planning on putting in a ground rod at the entanna and running #2 wire to the ground rod at the service entrance to bond them together fpr lightning protection. For a run that long, you should probably put a number of grounding rods along the length of that wire. The gold standard.......Motorola says do it this way (chapter 4 & 5). |
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All grounds should be bonded and connected together around the OUTSIDE of the building. The normal practice is to run ground strap or heavy wire around the perimeter of the foundation to bond all the grounds together. Add your ground point for your antennas wherever they need to come into the building and bond that ground to the perimeter ground ring.
If you want lightning protection against a direct strike you need a lot of copper and a lot of ground rods, you're effectively building a giant leaky capacitor to sink the lightning energy and then dissipate it into ground. |