RE: My Basement ground system: Your opinions

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Dave Hartwick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ddhartwick-at-earthlink-dot-net>

Gary,
The pipes are actually about 1.5" dia iron. I am using it strictly for
secondary RF ground.

Hot Water for heating and consumption is actually generated by our oil fired
furnace. I've never had any problems, at least running up to about 4 kW, but
that does not mean I consider the arrangement in a casual fashion.

With a small NST fired coil running at about 1 kW, I went around the house
with a fluorescent tube, touching plumbing wherever I could find it and
elicited no triggering of the tube. Of course, to accurately quantify the
excitation of the plumbing, and for that matter--AC mains, house ground,
etc., more sensitive measures are required. Perhaps a pickup coil operating
at Fres.

Some have suggested driving a ground rod into the ground. My understanding
was that this method does not really produce a good primary Tesla RF ground
unless multiple rods are used and soil conductivity is adequate.
Dave



I believe the reason to not use hot water pipes for a ground is that there
is typically something resembling a water heater between the hot water pipe
and the upstream pipe where it enters the earth.  In a 3rd wire ground
application, you don't want to be passing fault currents through your water
heater or furnace!

In the application that began this thread, the pipes go directly from the
TC connection point into the concrete mass.  Assuming that the buried pipes
are copper with soldered fittings, I would say that this would constitute a
very good RF ground.  But I would use this strictly for an RF ground, not
something subject to 60 Hz fault currents.

Regards, Gary Lau
MA, USA

> Hot water pipes are NEVER a good source of ground.