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You should be able to drive the ground rod directly with a sledge
hammer unless when you say it's a copper rod, you mean REALLY
copper (pretty unlikely), not copper-clad steel. It's best if
you pick a day when the ground is somewhat wet as that'll make
it easier.
The only really tough part comes if you hit a big rock. You may
be able to break right thru it if you keep banging with the sledge
but depending on what you've hit, you may be forced to pull the
rod back out and try somewhere else. If you're already down 4
or 5 feet, pulling it out can take some real work! You may have
to dig it out!
In answer to your other question, yes, you do want to get it down
all the way into the ground, but part of that's just because having
it stick up out of the ground looks terrible. :-)
I just moved so I've been redoing my grounding also. In my case,
I went with the solid brass rods from I.C.E. These are available
only in 6' lengths (they're cut from 12' stock), so to make up for
that, I got 4 of them, which I arranged as one in the center and
the others every 120 degrees at a roughly 2' radius then joined
with 1/2" copper tubing to the center, where other connections
are made. (Actually, btw, I am curious if others have comments on
the I.C.E. ground rods. I was attracted by the non-corroding aspect
of a solid brass rod but disappointed not to be able to buy it in
an 8' length. OTOH, if it's sold by I.C.E., I was hopeful they
should know what they're doing.)
Also, in my case, I wanted to but my rods under some decking right
behind the house since that'd be both closest to the shack and
out-of-sight and not a hazard someone might trip on. But since
the deck only allows about 5' of headroom under it, I first just
used a shovel to dig down about 3' before driving the rods with
a sledge; once they were in far enough, I could push the soil
back in place. Digging out that first few feet had the side
benefit of giving me some idea of how much rock I was likely to hit.
Regards,
Doug Hamilton KD1UJ hamilton-at-bix-dot-com Ph 508-440-8307 FAX 508-440-8308
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