grounding ground rods

["Metlicka Marc" <mystuffs-at-orwell-dot-net> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

hi all,
just a quick tip that we use in the trades for getting the highest
conductivity out of a ground rod, this was actually suggested by a
medical inspector, medical installations are by far the toughest
guidelines around. he wanted every ground rod in the installation to
have a tree fertilizer spike driven in beside it half way down the
length of the rod.
at first we thought this guy was crazy, when i asked him if the nitrated
soil wouldn't corrode the copper (medical installations must use solid
copper with cad welded connections) he said that surprisingly no the
spike releases so slow that it creates a zone of copper nitrates around
the rod that gets better and better as time goes by. well he was the
boss and now we do it on all ground rod installations.
also we use a large hammer drill (macho) to drive the rods in place, if
the area has a lot of rocks in it we then grind the end of the rod to a
one sided angle chisel point. this way chances are if it hits a rock it
will glance off to one side and keeps going.
of coarse if it hits a large rock straight on then we either pull it out
or cut it off below grade and drive a new one. there's no using a short
one in the trades.
marc