Grounding question :(

[kay]

I can be as detailed as you would like to help out, but i'll try and make this simple My dish is on the south side of my house. There is nothing on the south side of my house (windows, electrical anything, etc) except the dish. The dish is actually on a metal pole about 2 feet from the house.

The main electrical is on the north side of my house. My dish is not grounded - there is a grounding block connecting the coax to the dish (the usual grounding block) but nothing from there. From what I can tell NEC requires that I make a connection from the grounding block to the main grounding rod over on the north side of the house, but I cannot see how to do this other than two options:

1. I can run a single 10awg 80 foot wire to the main ground from the coax grounding block. This will be easy to hide visually and shouldn't be much of an eyesore.

2. I can run a 15ish foot wire to an 8 foot metal grounding rod, and then run a 65ish foot 6awg wire from grounding to grounding rod, snaked along the roof trim where it won't be seen. I wonder if there is any concern running such a beefy ground wire on the exterior of the house, and it can't be buried since my driveway is in the way.

Are either of these options feasible? The dish cannot be moved, there is only one spot where I can have it due to a 50 foot tall 50 foot across tree in the back yard, and i'm not willing to post mount a dish in my front yard.

 

[chadzx11]

1. I can run a single 10awg 80 foot wire to the main ground from the coax grounding block. This will be easy to hide visually and shouldn't be much of an eyesore.

2. I can run a 15ish foot wire to an 8 foot metal grounding rod, and then run a 65ish foot 6awg wire from grounding to grounding rod, snaked along the roof trim where it won't be seen. I wonder if there is any concern running such a beefy ground wire on the exterior of the house, and it can't be buried since my driveway is in the way.

#1 That won't bring you into NEC compliance. To be compiant you need to run coax with a ground (at least a #17 messenger) to within 20 feet of that ground source, install your ground block there, and then run your #10 ground over to the source.

#2 Check your codes. Some places will not let YOU drive a ground rod. You'd have to hire an electrician and it'd probably be inspected. As an installer, there is no way I'm doing the ground this way.

A quick walk outside reveals that my neighbors across the street have ground rods ~35 feet of each other. Dunno why that is allowed, but you can't have your dish on its own ground rod. I had a situtation where I didn't have enough coax with ground to reach a gentleman's house ground. He did have a pool with its own service box, meter, and ground rod that was 35 feet from the dish. Grounded the dish there, and installed a second ground block where I tied it in with his existing cable at the service entry.

When I was in the Marines, we'd have a generator with its own ground, a satellite van with 5 ground rods, and a 8 or 20 foot dish with 5 more ground rods, all in a small area. Nothing ever exploded to the best of my knowledge. We had to salt and water the grounds, too. Hey, the first time I did it, I was kind of nervous about pouring water on a ground rod. LOL!


If your satellite was installed recently, have the tech back out to rectify the situation. No reason for you to do it unless you did it to begin with.

 

[kay]

#1 That won't bring you into NEC compliance. To be compiant you need to run coax with a ground (at least a #17 messenger) to within 20 feet of that ground source, install your ground block there, and then run your #10 ground over to the source.

I can do this fairly easily, I would run the coax through the attic and out the north side of the house, and run a ground wire from there. In effect what i'd be doing is just placing a grounding block on the exterior of the house on the north side right above where the electrical main is. This would meet the requirement for it to be within 20 feet of the grounding block, but what about the requirement for how close the dish must be to the grounding block? I can't get the dish within 40 feet of the main electrical ground if the limitation is 20 feet per span of grounding.

edit: At this point i'm checking into the feasiblity of running a pvc conduit under the driveway. If this can be done relatively easily, then i'll run a thick (6awg IIRC) wire between the grounding rod on the other side and a grounding rod at the dish.

 

[chadzx11]

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

 

[bhelms]

I'm with chad - get the installer back to finish his job! Net of that, you can probably get away with multiple ground rods. The NEC requires that they be interconnected (not sure what the distance limits vs. min. wire size are) and the primary advantage of that is avoiding any nasty "ground loop" currents that can be induced by a nearby strike that could damage your connected equipment. The chances of that are probably slight, and the primary purpose of grounds in these systems is for static drain anyway, so in that case some ground is better than none. But I am NOT recommending that you don't precisely follow the codes that prevail. Your homeowner's insurance, not to mention your own safety, could be compromised otherwise!

 

[kay]

I've actually decided to invest the time and money into proper grounding, going to run a seperate grounding rod and bond them together with #6 copper wire via rated pvc conduit that is buried and goes under the driveway and across the yard to the main grounding rod. I want to do this to code. When it's all over i'll have it inspected anyway, the home never got a full inspection and i'd like to make sure the rest of my house (sort of a project house that's being remodeled) is up to code.