I'm probably obsessing (again) ..winter install?

[Quantum]

Just join the 4" to the cold-water pipe at the closest point with clamps and #8. The 4" will easily take a lightning-strike, and the jumper will prevent a difference of potential between that ground and the house ground. (ground-loop)

If I can BOND that 4 inch copper pipe to the cold water pipe that is a foot away from it... why can't I just ground the dishes and coax grounding block to that same water pipe?

Well I'm not sure where the term 'bond' came from... let's just say clamp. And the whole point of grounding the dish is to shunt a lightning-strike safely. If you clamp it to domestic water a ways from where it goes at least 20' underground, then that lightning-bolt must traverse under the house and may decide it would rather come out the kitchen faucet and go up your sleeve, or come out the toilet while you're taking a piss! :O Rest assured, running the dish to the 4", lightning would much prefer getting to ground as soon as possible.

And no worries man. All you Earthlings have gaps in your knowledge.

Edit: Meh, I see liquidforce beat me to it. Sleepy now.
PS - Nice photoshopped pictures of your ground-blocks liquidforce! ;j

 

[Liquidforce88]

Just join the 4" to the cold-water pipe at the closest point with clamps and #8. The 4" will easily take a lightning-strike, and the jumper will prevent a difference of potential between that ground and the house ground. (ground-loop)

First of all that 4" copper pipe is not water, it's waste/drain pipe. Do not bond that to the other pipe.

Edit: Meh, I see liquidforce beat me to it. Sleepy now.
PS - Nice photoshopped pictures of your ground-blocks liquidforce! ;j

Don't know what makes you think those are photoshopped. They are either pictures of installs I have done, or from jobs I have QC'd.

 

[Quantum]

First of all that 4" copper pipe is not water, it's waste/drain pipe. Do not bond that to the other pipe.

A copper pipe underground is a copper pipe underground. They make a fine ground as long as buried at least 20', and this one is what, 140'? And with that diameter, all the better.

They have copper strap clamps at Lowes, in Electrical.

Don't know what makes you think those are photoshopped. They are either pictures of installs I have done, or from jobs I have QC'd.

Oh, keep yer shirt on... I was teasing you.

 

[Liquidforce88]

A copper pipe underground is a copper pipe underground. They make a fine ground as long as buried at least 20', and this one is what, 140'? And with that diameter, all the better.

They have copper strap clamps at Lowes, in Electrical.



Oh, keep yer shirt on... I was teasing you.

Dude Have you ever seen what a spark and sewer gas will do? Don't bond that 4" copper pipe to the ground source.

 

[cparker]

Dude Have you ever seen what a spark and sewer gas will do? Don't bond that 4" copper pipe to the ground source.

No sewer gas. It's abandoned. The 4 inch copper exits the BACK of the basement to where the old septic tank was. The system was converted to sewers 2 years ago. The tanks were pumped and filled in with dirt.

 

[Quantum]

Dude Have you ever seen what a spark and sewer gas will do? Don't bond that 4" copper pipe to the ground source.

Are you fscking with me?!

 

[cparker]

Oh and I THINK I have an understanding of bonding versus grounding. Probably a layman's understanding as opposed to any kind of DEEP understanding but here goes...

If I were to drive another ground rod right below where the dishes are being mounted, I would BOND it to the electrical ground by running a #6 (I think it's a #6 or #8, but that's not important to this explanation) back to the electrical earth ground near the electric panel location outside the house. BONDING makes it part of the earth ground of the house. BONDING is necessary to negate the differential potential between the copper rod I just drove in and the house ground rod. Now I can GROUND the dishes to that new copper rod.

My older brother is an electronics/electrical engineer. He said basically you want to give any LARGE voltage like could happen from a nearby lightning strike a place to go to ground and you want that to be as close to the equipment as possible. We're still not talking about a direct strike. This isn't lightning protection. It's more prevention than protection, but he said you can get some pretty high voltage on the antenna and cables from a nearby lightning strike.... even a couple houses away.

For my situation.... in PRACTICAL terms...
I can't drive a new copper rod now because there's a concrete sidewalk there. It runs the length of the house on the back and around the side of the garage. We plan to tear all that concrete out next year and not replace it... at least not with concrete. So for now he says, "Do the best you can". Basically... ground it to a water pipe until next year and then do a properly bonded rod and new ground for the dishes and cable when we take the concrete out.

In practical terms, that's an answer I can live with. And before any engineers jump in ... the explanation he was giving was to ME to try to get me to understand something I didn't understand. It may not be full of technical details. He also said grounding it to the water pipe so far away from the pipe entrance to the house is not optimal and give a high voltage spike a lot of opportunities to go off and leave the pipes (especially at the 90 degree elbows that you find in house plumbing all over the place) and do weird stuff. So I shouldn't leave it that way any longer than necessary. He's also a ham operator and has LOTS of experience with grounding antennas and such.

So for anyone else running into this grounding issue, maybe this will help you understand WHY you're supposed to do it a certain way and what some of the terms mean.

** OH! ... "differential potential".... between 2 copper rods that are not bonded. Like your house ground and that copper rod you just drove into the ground and figured you didn't have to bond back to the house ground... If you were to stretch a wire from one copper rod to the other and they're NOT bonded, you can get a VOLTAGE reading on a meter! Kinda like a weak BATTERY. There is electrical POTENTIAL between those 2 rods because of simple DIFFERENCES (the "differential" part) between soil moisture and acidity, etc at the 2 different locations. That's not good and can lead to odd performance problems and almost surely a hum in your speakers that you can't seem to get rid of. On CRT displays I'm told it can also show up as a "hum bar" ... a line that slowly scrolls up or down on the screen. BONDING makes those 2 rods "as one" and removes that differential potential.

 

[Quantum]

Hm, sounds exactly like what I have been trying to tell you all along. (Except for this spurious 'bonding' tripe)

Maybe my posts are invisible...

 

[cparker]

Nope... not invisible. And I thank you for your help honestly. It was you that got me to where I knew what questions to ask when my brother called last night

 

[cparker]

OK I just went and measured stuff. I could drive a new ground rod on the other side of the sidewalk and bond it to the house ground rod by running about 125 feet of ..... what size? ... wire. #8 ok to bond the 2 ground rods? or should I be using #6?.

This means the ground wire for the entry point ground block would have to cross the sidewalk to get to the grounding rod, but the sidewalk is pitched and heaved right there and there's a big crack at a control joint that I could tuck a #10 copper into. If we mess it up next year when we pull the sidewalks out I can just replace that ground wire.

If I can get the wire, the rod, and some help from my kids doing some shallow trenching, then I might be able to get this done this weekend. Could be the last of the decent weather we'll be having for a while (Like.... until APRIL!)

So... what size wire to connect the 2 ground rods? And does it have to be bare? Solid? Stranded?

 

[Quantum]

You'll run 125' of ... nothing. Can't be more than 20' to meet Code.

 

[OoTLink]

So if you have to put the dish more than 20' away from the electrical demarc, you're breaking code? Nice! So much for pole installs!

 

[cparker]

20 feet for a ground wire the way I understand it. Not 20 feet to bond a second ground rod to the main house ground. I bond the second ground rod to teh main ground rod and tehn I only need a ground wire about 10 feet to get from dishes/grounding block to that second ground rod.

 

[dishcomm]

Ok, I am admittedly probably overthinking this, but that's what I do.

I am preparing house#2 to move into and then will sell house #1 (and THEN I'll move into house #2).
House #2 currently has no dish install, but I will want it when I move in. At this time it appears likely that we won't be moving in before December.

From an installer's perspective how hard is it to install in December in western NY?
This is almost certainly going to be an eave install on a ranch home (single story)

If I want the dishes on the END of the house at the gable end (eaves about 18") then I need to get up there and trim back a maple tree a little bit. OR I could move the dish location to about 12 feet from the gable end, still on the eaves (about 2 feet eaves here) and not have to trim anything. These locations satisfy my wife's "I don't want to see them from the street" request and provide good LOS to both the 110/119 and the 61.5 orbitals.

I hate that the last time they did an eaves install (on House #1) they ran the coax over the gutter. Black coax on white siding. Lovely.

Would it be worth it to me to put a couple of commdeck mounts up there and just say, "Put them there" when it comes time for an install? Or should I trim back the maple, go for the eaves install, and then just have the coax entering the gable end of the garage. I have my RG6 runs for the house already run into the garage for this.

I would love to NOT have them on the roof, but my wife doesn't want them as part of the landscaping when she looks out the window in the back yard.

Photos might help.... I'll see if I can find my wife's house pictures...

Ok... Picasa Web Albums - Chris - Griffin Street is the front of the house for general orientation. If you stand on the driveway, facing the garage doors, you're facing east. You can see that the south side of the house has a line of pine trees. I am confident that I've got enough elevation to the 110/119 orbital to look over those trees without a problem.

Picasa Web Albums - Chris - Griffin Street is the gable end of the garage. Tree cover in this photo looks much worse than it actually is. To put a dish on this eave almost to the back corner of the house, would require me to trim off one branch on the maple and it's not that big. Most of what you see as tree cover in this photo is actually behind the house and would not interfere with LOS.

Picasa Web Albums - Chris - Griffin Street is the back wall of the house. The soffits here are not only vinyl clad, but also slanted so I don't think a soffit mount would work here. If you see that little light on the back of the house, there's a people-door into the garage there. If I mount 2 dishes above that door, I wouldn't have to trim any trees, but they'd probably run the coax over the gutter and that just looks ugly. Unless they carry white coax with them.

Or should I consider something like this
Dish Mount Products
and hope that no part of it is low enough for someone to whack their head on?

ahh let's see...lake effect snow country...Ok as you know you can have bare ground then 8hrs later, 3 feet of snow. You should be able to answer this one yourself. If the date if install has you in white out conditions, you can pretty much expect a reschedule..
Now if the roof is covered in snow. it is possible if it's cold enough to simply brush the fresh snow away and expose the roof.. If it's "old" snow with an layer of ice beneath, I would think of another placement.
Now in looking at you post I see a lot of restrictions. Perhaps you'd be better off mounting the dishes or the masts yourself.
I try on every occasion to accomodate a customer's wishes in dish placement. But if a customer is very particular and this drags out the time lapse from my arrival to the the commencement of work I have in the past put my foot down. I have had to advise customers that they need to make a decision or have us come out on another day when they are ready with that decision. The main reasons are that it is not fair to other customers schedled that day for one customer to back up those other appointments. All customers are equally important. Please be mindful of that when you make your appointment.
We are willing to accomodate . But please be aware that there are limits to everything

 

[dishcomm]

Couple things for you to consider. I don't know about your area, but in Michigan this applies.

1. If you have the cable enter the house above the garage, it has to be grounded to the house electric with in 5' of entry into the house. Most of the time there is not a spot to ground in the garage rafters, so we can't enter the building unless we run cables to the ground then back.

2. That fancy mount you posted a link to, will not pass Dish code. We are not allowed to mount to a wall or brick. Even if you put the mount up we could not use it. If we goto service calls and find a Dish mounted to the wall of a house we have to remove it.

3. White cable is not allowed to be used outdoors, as it is not UV rated.

Our only mounting allowed locations are on the roof over the eves not over the living space unless we have no other line of site, or on a pole.

No wallmounts? That must be local... We do them all the time. Brick and wood are fine. No vinyl, aluminum, stucco and in some cases , Hardyplank( cement fiber board).......But from the looks of this house, the trees are growing right over the roof. Look angles that far north are
232 deg AZ and 31.4 deg EL fro the 110; 242deg AZ and 26 Deg EL for the 119. and 165 AZ/ 36 deg EL for the 61.5.....if he's got large trees more than 30 feet tal within 60 feet of the house ,he'd better have a couple of good sized holes between those trees

 

[dishcomm]

Couple things for you to consider. I don't know about your area, but in Michigan this applies.

1. If you have the cable enter the house above the garage, it has to be grounded to the house electric with in 5' of entry into the house. Most of the time there is not a spot to ground in the garage rafters, so we can't enter the building unless we run cables to the ground then back.

2. That fancy mount you posted a link to, will not pass Dish code. We are not allowed to mount to a wall or brick. Even if you put the mount up we could not use it. If we goto service calls and find a Dish mounted to the wall of a house we have to remove it.

3. White cable is not allowed to be used outdoors, as it is not UV rated.

Our only mounting allowed locations are on the roof over the eves not over the living space unless we have no other line of site, or on a pole.

on grounding..... so if you run the cables form the dish into an attic for example and ground to an electrical fixture or other acceptable ground ,you cannot do the job unless that ground is feet or less from the cable penetration?....What do you do with these jobs that must be resched or canceled due to these restrictions?...Ho do you do business with these restrictions?
I also have never seen restrictions barring white cable.....I just don't buy white cable. It adds another possibility of playing 20 questions with a high maintenence individual who wants home decorating expertise as well as a satellite tv

 

[dishcomm]

Yeah I know it sounds kinda petty, but it also interferes with cleaning the gutters when they get leaves and junk in them.

It's also bugging me (just a little bit) that the prevailing winds come from the front of the house. Up here that means that if we get a heavy snowfall it's likely going to form snow drifts on that back roof. I have a real strong suspicion I'll be out there using a roof rake to clear snow from around the dishes.

Oh well.

over the gutter or you remove the gutter to convey the cable down the side of the house. ..If i have an install at a home that has many leaf bearing trees
i will leave a loop so that the homeowner can clean the gutter beneath the cable without any additional effort

 

[dishcomm]

The water pipes enter the house at the extreme opposite end of the house and dishes can't be mounted there due to LOS issues. I have concrete sidewalks right up tight against the house all the way around the garage so there's no place to even drive a grounding rod.

The new electric panel has a ground that goes outside and is buried and it also has grounding to the water pipe entrance (where it also jumps the water meter). The rules for grounding are confusing as hell. Should I run a wire inside the house to the water pipes entrance and bug it to the electrical grounding there? Or should I run it all the way around the house and tie it into the outside ground? Either way is going to be a fairly long run of wire. Probably 75 to 100 feet easy. Inside path to water pipes is much shorter than outside path around the house.

the ground wire cannnot be longer than the shortest run to the first receiver. Generally the length of the ground wire cannot exceed 10 or 20 feet depending on the rules set by the local Dish office management..Ground rods are a no no unless NO other ground is possible.

 

[dishcomm]

So it's gotta be #10... ok no problem... but it can only be 20 feet? How the heck would you accomplish that if your grounding location is on the opposite side of the house?

Locate the dish in close proximity to the panel location? Not possible in this case. I do have another pipe... it's about a 4" copper line going out to the old septic tank (now abandoned as they've put sewers in), however THAT pipe isn't bonded to the rest of the water supply pipes which ARE bonded to the electric panel.

OK this might be a dumb question, but I'm dumb so I'm asking it...
If the electric panel has a ground going outside (to earth) AND is bonded to the copper water lines in the house at the pipe entrance, AND they jumped the meter so there's continuity of ground (hoping that's the right way to put it) ... isn't that whole copper plumbing system pretty darn well grounded? There's a continuous copper pipe (several of them actually) going to that pipe entrance location, which is freshly and thoroughly connected to the new electric panel. I can't see how a piece of #10 copper wire.... running all the way from the rear, east corner of the house to the front, west corner of the house and connected to the pipe entrance, could possibly be any better of a ground than clamping it to a copper pipe that's only 15 feet or so from the proposed dish location.

AND... you're telling me it would basically be an exercise in futility to go and buy 100 feet of #10 copper and run that wire to the pipe entry point because it would be more than 20 feet and therefore not meet code anyways..... right?

If all of this is correct, then technically I can't have a dish.

OR... I can take the most reasonable approach feasible in this situation and just ground the darn thing to the copper plumbing 15 feet away. Plumbing that I can SEE is connected to my electric panel at the other end.

I know this probably isn't technically correct per NEC, but NEC isn't law... it's guidelines. So in PRACTICAL terms.... is what I'm proposing about the only way to go?

In simplest terms, and please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this... the copper water supply plumbing is bonded to the electrical panel by virtue of those shiny new connections the electricians put on the pipes.... on both sides of the meter... within 5 feet (1 foot actually) of the pipe entrance into the house. There are no non-conductive connections in that copper plumbing. It's all solder connections and copper-to-copper.

A connection to that supply plumbing then becomes part of that system and is properly grounded and bonded to the panel by virtue of those connections I mentioned.

In PRACTICAL terms, this seems like a whole lot better ground than if I were to pound a copper rod in the ground near teh dish and hope for the best.

After further pondering....
I have a 4" copper pipe exiting the basement at the rear of the house. Easily reachable from the proposed satellite location AND extending more than 30 feet under ground away from the house. If I clamped THAT to the water pipes and then grounded the dish to it within 5 feet of the wall penetration (it would actually be within 2 feet as there's only 2 feet of it left in the house), would THAT be better? Useable? Against NEC...

you can have a Dish system in your case if you sign off all liability against Dish and the installer on this grounding matter.
And if I was the instraller I'd ask you to sign a waiver before I did any work. That's not to be mean. That's to get your job done and to protect myself from lawsuits or any other claim whatsoever..Sorry, we live in a "gotcha" world...So it has to be that way

 

[dishcomm]

A copper pipe underground is a copper pipe underground. They make a fine ground as long as buried at least 20', and this one is what, 140'? And with that diameter, all the better.

They have copper strap clamps at Lowes, in Electrical.



Oh, keep yer shirt on... I was teasing you.

no grounding to Drain Waste Vent (DWV pipe) is permitted per Dish and possibly NEC as well