Original poster: "Gerry Reynolds" <gerryreynolds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Hi Jim, See interspersed comments.
Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> At 10:15 PM 10/10/2006, Tesla list wrote:Original poster: "Gerry Reynolds" <gerryreynolds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>Your post is very interesting. Our house also has the breaker panel grounded to the copper pipe bringing water into the house. An electrical contractor for our area says that this connection is no longer done and instead the breaker panel is grounded via a rod pounded into the ground at the breaker panel. Seems like a step back according to your measurements. I wonder if the reason for the change has to do with electrolysis of the copper pipe.
Nope.. has to do with the fact that water mains are not always metal any more. Plastic is more and more common.
OK. Good to know.
Anyway, if a grounding rod is good enough for the breaker panel then why not good enough for a TC RF ground.Lots of reasons. the breaker panel ground is designed for line frequency grounding, primarily for human life safety....
I understand the safety reasons. The question is: how is a breaker panel that is grounded via a rod in the ground any more safe than a TC ground that also is a rod in the ground other than the frequencies are different. Could it be that the heavy guage service neutral that comes to the house is also grounded at the distribution point and that is what really provides the line frequency ground, and the rod in the ground at the breaker panel is more for RF grounding???.
The RF choke between RF ground and safety ground is probably fine for the fundamental RF (say 100KHz), however if a secondary strike hits an object that is earth grounded, the RF choke may do little to keep the return current out of the house wiring.I would think that in a "RF isolated" system (such as contemplated here) you'd really, really want to avoid strikes to things NOT connected to the RF ground; i.e. you want strikes ONLY to the counterpoise, and if you have a "grounded" electrode to draw strikes, you want it connected to the counterpoise, not "earth ground".
YES, and this is why I dont like the RF choke between the mains ground and RF ground. Such a strike could arc over the choke and have transient currents in the mains ground. Of course, without the RF choke, the RF ground is not considered safe and anything connected to it should be considered in the KEEP OUT zone while operating.
Gerry R.