Has anyone experienced this? Quite a few years ago, I was on a microwave relay station/tower site. The site was on nearly solid rock. The specs required that all metal objects were to be bonded to the grounding grid, even the copper screening on the outdoor toilet. Requirements were 25 ohms or less. Unable to obtain this, the EC got some charcoal brickets and crushed them into a powder and poured the powder into the holes where the ground rods were placed in the rock. The system then indicated no resistance over 10 ohms. I still don't understand it.
Rowdy

Carbon (main ingredient in charcoal briquettes) is a conductor, which is why it's used in resistors, potentiometers, etc.

Maybe it reduced the electrical resistance of the ground he was sticking the rods into.

Just a thought.

Kind of a "MacGiver" approach to chemical soil treatments!

Scott s.e.t.

Scott,
Would you elaborate on chemical soil treatments? In all my years, I have never had to treat the soil on any job I've been on. We just have good soil down here.

Not a MacGiver fan,
Doc

Coal mines here have to run many hundreds of feet of large copper pipe to obtain 25 Ohms.

Tom could give you better actual numbers than me.

Alas, grounding is a major headache for me and I'm always interested in different methods...

Although not required to obtain 25 Ohms in the work I do (minimum 2 rods regardless by PoCo) I would like the rods I labor so hard to install actually do something!

Tell me more!

the 'chemical' G-rods posted here a while back looked interesting. I wonder how often one would need to maintain the bentonite?

Thanks Spark,

Doc

I made mine out of a 5 gal bucket the 10' copper rod was driven 2' below grade then the bucket was drilled with holes in the bottom and in the lid. probely not the best way but I used 3 round salt blocks the ones we use for horses or cows just put them in the bucket and let the rain do the rest