[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

ground rods

Greetings,

We too have poor rocky soil.  I was able to achieve some success in putting
an 8' copper pipe into the ground.  Here's how I did it. I have a 6 foot steel 
rod/pry bar that has a point on the end.  It has straight smooth sides.  
I picked a time after it had been raining for a few days, so the clay was 
slightly softer than concrete.  I just started lifting it up and jamming it 
down back into the same hole again and again.  After a little while, I noticed
that I was making pretty good progress.  Eventually, I had the thing to the
point that it would only stick out about 6-8".  During the process, I would
occasionally add a little water to soften things up.  
Once I couldn't use the pry bar, I took a hammer and put a point on the pipe
by flattening the end and then folding over the corners.  Then I started 
pounding.  However, the end quickly mashed down, so I rummaged around and
found a steel shaft with a shoulder that just fit in/over the pipe.  This 
worked for a while, but was splitting the pipe.  I then rummaged around some
more and found a steel sleeve that fit over the pipe.  This bolstered up
the copper pipe enough so that I could use a sledge hammer to drive the thing 
in to about 6" from the top.  

Chip