Two, eight foot long 5/8" copper clad steel rods - plus - One 1 1/2" Milwaukee rotary hammer drill (no bit) - equals - Five minutes total to drive them both through clay and rock
For the last few inches I put an old 6" long 1/2" drive impact extension in the drill to use as a bit. Worked great.
I can't imagine how cave men drove their ground rods...
ok, now lets see you use the drill to get them out in five minutes....
We use sledge hammers
with pipes as handles so we can use them like a post pounder until the top of the rod gets close to the ground.
*I have been using a rotary hammer for many years now except that I have ground rod driver bits to go in the rotary hammers. You got lucky with your soil conditions. In some spots I hit shale and it is very slow going in.
Push them in the ground with a backhoe
Jimmie
Through sheer force of will.
Jon
Some elections drive them with sledge hammers until they hit a rock. Then cut them off. WW
A drive pipe, and young stupid junior employees they wanted to keep busy and out of their hair. (DAMHIKT. BTDT, etc.)
-- aem sends...
Hmmm, Cave men used power of water and patience even drill a hole thru hard rock. Now you can test the quality of the ground rod by connecting a 120V lamp between hot and it. If the lamp lights up bright?
True story helped a old friend widen his driveway, till we hit the ground rod system a couple feet from the house. He reported the electrician was unable to drive rod closer to home, supposedly metal trash buried in area. Quite possible since it a old farm house.
I said no problem we will drive new ground rods just behind house.:)
he inssted he wanted to pull and reuse the ground rods and copper wire. The copper ground wire was aleady beat up from our digging around it:(
So I said you pull the rods, and redrive them then I will help finish the widening.
That was about 3 years ago the job hasnt progressed at all.
JIMMIE wrote in news:6dfd10fb-ee07-44f3-88b4- snipped-for-privacy@a22g2000yqc.googlegroups.com:
Got a Harbor Freight coupon for one of those?
(snip)
Chuckle. Gotta love those coupons. I've got 7 of the little flashlights so far.
-- aem sends...
how do you attach that 5/8" rod to a 1/2" chuck?
Steve Barker wrote in news:lp6dncnpSdXmyMHWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:
Using a DT adapter Steve. With all your skills and experience, I'm surprised by your Q. The adapter is made by 3M. If you can't use baking soda for something, try duct tape.
I pounded two ground rods each at 10 feet long according to our Code. We have heavy hard pan clay starting about the 3 foot level. I had a step ladder and a 12 pound sledge. They went down the 3 feet easily, but the last
6 feet was murder (I left 1 foot out the ground as we were backfilling about 3 more feet of fill to get final grade). Out of sheer boredom, as it was taking all day, I measured progress as I counted the hits of the sledge hammer. I was getting about 30 hits per inch or a 1/32 inch per hit. My arms were ready to drop off after spending an entire day just to get two ground rods installed as a had an inspection the next day so that I could get the panel turned on for temporary power. This was 40 years ago, I wish I had heard of using a hammer drill, that is if I could afford one back then.
Ground rod pounders and big hammers. Key word "men", not boys and girls. Limp wrists don't help much either.
I'm over sixty years old. Two years ago I installed a fifty foot antenna tower for high speed internet at my house. I pounded in four
11' ground rods (lightning) and put up the tower in an afternoon by myself.Imagine that.
LdB
I once thought of that and even went to the trouble of doing research to find a long enough masonry bit. Does anyone make a masonry bit that long? I sure would like to buy one.
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