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EARTH ELECTRODE A NOVEL METHOD

John Peckham
I am currently teaching a group of electricians from a company who are all South Africans or Zimbos to update to the 18th Edition.


We were working through the different types of earthing systems and I asked what did the use back home. The answer came TT. I asked what was the soil like and how deep and how many rods did they use. I will not try to mimic the accent or their terminology but words to the effect of, " We dig a big hole with a digger, lug a conductors on to a car or lorry engine and drop it in the hole with the digger and back fill".



Now I thought that was a brilliant idea given the surface area of a car engine dropped in to a deep hole. That would be ideal for an earth for my amateur radio transmitter assuming SWMBO would not object to a large hole in the front garden.


  • 0
    I reckon it is a bit of a so and so if its your car engine they took to use for it though.? In the UK I can imagine the H and S police insisting it was inspected to be sure it was fully cleaned of all potentially nasty chemicals first.

    The burial of random chunks of metal as an earth has good pedigree in the ham fraternity, and while I have not heard of an engine as such I am aware of old water heater tanks and similar being pressed into service, as well as chicken mesh on its side and turfed over, scaff poles in trenches among other wheezes..

    The problem being that the normal 50Hz solution of just going deeper is not useful at higher frequencies, due to the electrode becoming a significant fraction of a wave long, and the current in different parts of it being out of phase.
  • 0
    Back during the foot and mouth disease cattle cull tractors were buried along with carcasses, however some tractors had to be dug up because the diesel,  oil and water had not been drained from them. After they were drained the tractors were buried again 


    Apart from the obvious silliness of this it's rather worrying as if the fluids from the tractors could end up  in water courses,  so could the fluids from the carcasses. 


    One of my neighbours bought a new Ford Galaxy and it was scrapped after less than six months, because he drove into flood water alongside a BSE and Foot and Mouth disease cull burial site not realising it was deeper than he thought resulting in it cutting out resulting in the car having to be recovered. 


    Perhaps burying engines or complete vehicles is not such a good idea ?


    Andy Betteridge
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    Talking of farmers, initiative is a pre-requisite. A local farmer had obtained a government grant for diversification of land so he set about developing a small caravan site. He did all the work himself including the electrical installation. However, do have the grant paid over he needed an NICEIC contractor to inspect and provide report. I was said contractor. TT installation with obvious earthing conductor going in to ground but no sign of rod or the like. Can’t remember actual loop impedance but well within Limits. Turned out he had buried a Vauxhall Viva and connected his earth to the chassis.
  • 0
    So not just an EICR but also an MOT or SORN to be checked at regular intervals then. ?
  • 0
    "So not just an EICR but also an MOT or SORN to be checked at regular intervals then. ? "


    ?


    I suppose this redifines the term "An Electric Car" too!
  • 0
    Over forty years ago one of my brothers mates turned up at our house with a brand new metal detector he had just bought, so we set about surveying the garden.


    There was a huge ping indicating metal under part of the vegetable garden, so we started digging just to find several sheets of corrugated steel roofing sheets that my dad had put over the top of the septic tank soak away.


    Andy Betteridge

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