ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Anyone got a funny ground rod story?

We do a lot of ground rod driving around here with air compressors, that does lead to some major mess ups.

A friend of mine was driving the 10' rod, it was going in pretty tough, just as he got to where he could stand on the ground, he thought he felt something..... he did, the rod made a u turn underground and came right up his pants leg.

It's a fairly common thing for them to turn around and come back out..... ya only need one rod, tell the inspector ya drove 2.

On the original story, the lady freaked, and seemed afraid of the idea that her car was parked above us. The Inspector said nothing other than "Wow, nice find... Where's the rod?" Over here next to the liquor cabinet...

Lostazhell, in that pic' how come they didn't just bury them?

Next rod story... After beating a rod for nearly 6 hours with a slide hammer, sledge hammer, and roto-hammer! I took a break from the heat, and noticed a 150lbs demo/jack hammer laying there on the site under a tarp. I decided to carry it up the ladder, and give it a shot on the rod. Put it on the rod, pulled the trigger, and it shot down so fast, I nearly fell off the ladder with it. I assume I had just another 1/4" of rock to hammer through..... But, if I ever get in that situation again, will waste not time in going down to rent one right away.

(While in the Marines, we used to have sectional threaded rod that we would have to PULL back UP! Yep, your tax dollars at work! For inspections we would have to pull them up, and do 500 pushups for not having all three sections in, then put it back down! We push'ed for 91 degree bends too. Try that with your Employees....)

Funny ground rod story. Hmmm. Take one peice of a ground rod, a small sledge hammer, a crawl space, and some brick firestopping in the wall. Add one dishwasher, an eager helper and a journeyman and what do you get? I don't know what you guys would get but the homeowner ended up getting a new dishwasher!

now that u have laid out the pieces of the puzzle and shown us the picture , please put it all together for us

Sparky what happened was we were running some wiring in the house. We drilled up the wall and hit brick firestop in the base of the wall cavity. We used a peice of ground rod and small sledge to pound a hole through. Journeyman told me to keep pounding. So pound I did! We wrapped up the job and all was well untill that night when the homeowner ran the dishwasher and water was all over the floor. Turns out the rod punctured the dishwasher. How the journeyman couldn't tell that was happening while I was on the other end pounding away I'll never know. I would think it would have to have been really loud and maybe even rattling the dishwasher pretty badly.

EC&M might print the story this thread started with..... In the "Short Circuits" funny stories section.

We'll see....

[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 08-18-2004).]

Ever drive a ground rod and find the underground water service? (The time I did the water service was mismarked by 8 feet.)
Gee Home owner you have a new fountian

Was re-doing an illegal "gypsy" service change. The inspector saw the 6" of ground rod sticking up, and asked if I could drive it a little deeper.
As I stooped to disconnect the GEC, I thought it looked a little funny. I also thought the rod seemed awfully loose. I could move it with my hand....
A good tug, and a line appeared on the ground. The installer had bent the rod with a rebar bender, and had run it horizontally, under only a few inches of dirt.

ya having to drive it by hand i find that funny! it stinks!

A few years back I was working in the service department for a large contractor. On a large project at a wastewater plant they had a leak indicator that reguired a ground rod. The job was already complete the concrete walk and paving done. I looked on the as-built drawings to see where the conduits left the building, measured another 6' and began to slot the paving. I installed the rod and buried the wire in the slot, a little self leveling patch man I was proud. Called the tech in to calibrate his equipment and he lost the signal to the sensor. After checking everything out we determined the cable was bad. Tried to pull old cable out and new one in, would not go. Wound up digging down where pipe was supposed to be found nothing but dirt. You guessed it I put the ground rod right through the conduit, dead center.