Thanks for all the replies.

New ground rods going in this weekend (weather permitting). Brother will
be driving, I will be wiring.

Will try turning off all breakers, except the one feeding the wall
outlets, to see what happens, this weekend.

Furnace (new 2 years ago) sheet metal & ductwork to ground checked, no
voltage, either to ground or incoming water pipe. (Will check again
after new ground rods put in).

Overhead lights to be rewired, separate circuit, with grounds. They are
CFL's.(will be replaced with incandescent).

Ceiling tiles are T & G fiber, nailed in place, (no suspended grid), but
will be torn down, as brother hates the look. Will be replaced with same
style after rewiring.

Have not personally checked bare speaker buzz, but suspect it is as
Michael Terrill proposed, the speaker cone is focusing ambient 60 Hz,
and when you stick your ear near it, you hear it.

Question concerning water pipe ground. Breaker box is in NW corner of
basement. Incoming water pipe is in NE corner, near last wall outlet in
the line. Have not checked if any other grounds to plumbing exist.
Should this be grounded to the breaker box, with it's own ground wire?

More updates after this weekend.

--
Steve Walker
(remove brain when replying)

In rec.crafts.metalworking on 2010-12-29 Steve Walker wrote:

New ground rods going in this weekend (weather permitting). Brother will
be driving, I will be wiring.

If you have a rental place nearby, check the cost of renting a ground
rod driver. The ones I've seen electricians using were electric
(rather than gas or pneumatic) and took 5 to 10 minutes to sink an
8-foot ground rod (10 minutes when the rod hit a rock and had to be
repositioned). Without a driver, it's easy to bend the rod or only be
able to sink it half way.


[...]

--
jiw

On 12/28/2010 19:19, James Waldby wrote:
In rec.crafts.metalworking on 2010-12-29 Steve Walker wrote:

New ground rods going in this weekend (weather permitting). Brother will
be driving, I will be wiring.

If you have a rental place nearby, check the cost of renting a ground
rod driver. The ones I've seen electricians using were electric
(rather than gas or pneumatic) and took 5 to 10 minutes to sink an
8-foot ground rod (10 minutes when the rod hit a rock and had to be
repositioned). Without a driver, it's easy to bend the rod or only be
able to sink it half way.


[...]


He's going to try this way:


http://www.cosjwt.com/index.php?a=16

--
Steve Walker
(remove brain when replying)

On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:03:32 -0500, Steve Walker
wrote:

Question concerning water pipe ground. Breaker box is in NW corner of
basement. Incoming water pipe is in NE corner, near last wall outlet in
the line. Have not checked if any other grounds to plumbing exist.
Should this be grounded to the breaker box, with it's own ground wire?

More updates after this weekend.
Yes. Not sure of the wire guage, but there is a bare stranded wire
made specifically for the job.

James Waldby wrote:
In rec.crafts.metalworking on 2010-12-29 Steve Walker wrote:

New ground rods going in this weekend (weather permitting). Brother will
be driving, I will be wiring.

If you have a rental place nearby, check the cost of renting a ground
rod driver. The ones I've seen electricians using were electric
(rather than gas or pneumatic) and took 5 to 10 minutes to sink an
8-foot ground rod (10 minutes when the rod hit a rock and had to be
repositioned). Without a driver, it's easy to bend the rod or only be
able to sink it half way.

Once, in some Ham magazine, they used copper pipe for a ground rod; they
attached a garden hose fitting, and the water pressure loosened the dirt,
so they could about drive it in with their bare hands.

Cheers!
Rich

Steve Walker wrote:
On 12/28/2010 19:19, James Waldby wrote:
In rec.crafts.metalworking on 2010-12-29 Steve Walker wrote:

New ground rods going in this weekend (weather permitting). Brother will
be driving, I will be wiring.

If you have a rental place nearby, check the cost of renting a ground
rod driver. The ones I've seen electricians using were electric
(rather than gas or pneumatic) and took 5 to 10 minutes to sink an
8-foot ground rod (10 minutes when the rod hit a rock and had to be
repositioned). Without a driver, it's easy to bend the rod or only be
able to sink it half way.


[...]


He's going to try this way:


http://www.cosjwt.com/index.php?a=16



Big rocks and small boulders are what causes problems driving ground rods.


John

John wrote:
Steve Walker wrote:

He's going to try this way:


http://www.cosjwt.com/index.php?a=16



Big rocks and small boulders are what causes problems driving ground rods.


John


They also stop you when digging holes for deck posts!!!

Back when I built the deck on this place I sunk 9 posts in the ground.
Dug about 4-5 feet on most of them and planted them good. Had only one
that gave a problem. Dug down about 3 feet and hit a rock.
No problem, I'll just dig around it and move it and fill in the hole.
Well after digging a hole almost 6 feet across both ways and not finding
any edge to the rock I decided that it was going to be there a while.
Placed the post, poured concrete around it and buried it. Hasn't moved
more than an inch in almost 20 years! Guess it will probably stay that
way a while longer.


Had a neighbor who needed a drilled well for the bank to approve the
mortgage (this with three dug wells that had good water). They brought
in a guy who set up and told them, "No problem I'll be done in about 3
days" His rig hit solid rock about 25 feet down. He moved and found rock
at about 45 feet. He finally gave up with one and they cheated a bit.
The "drilled well" got connected up underground with one of the dug
wells. The amount of water made the bank happy and AFAIK it has never
been hooked to...

--
Steve W.

Steve Walker wrote:
Thanks for all the replies.

New ground rods going in this weekend (weather permitting). Brother will
be driving, I will be wiring.

Will try turning off all breakers, except the one feeding the wall
outlets, to see what happens, this weekend.

Furnace (new 2 years ago) sheet metal & ductwork to ground checked, no
voltage, either to ground or incoming water pipe. (Will check again
after new ground rods put in).

Overhead lights to be rewired, separate circuit, with grounds. They are
CFL's.(will be replaced with incandescent).

Ceiling tiles are T & G fiber, nailed in place, (no suspended grid), but
will be torn down, as brother hates the look. Will be replaced with same
style after rewiring.

Have not personally checked bare speaker buzz, but suspect it is as
Michael Terrill proposed, the speaker cone is focusing ambient 60 Hz,
and when you stick your ear near it, you hear it.

Question concerning water pipe ground. Breaker box is in NW corner of
basement. Incoming water pipe is in NE corner, near last wall outlet in
the line. Have not checked if any other grounds to plumbing exist.
Should this be grounded to the breaker box, with it's own ground wire?

More updates after this weekend.

--
Steve Walker
(remove brain when replying)

I had a dodgy power problem that I just solved yesterday. About three
weeks ago the electric company had to come out and reattach the
service drop because a tree limb nailed it while being trimmed.

Any way the guy that came out had expressed a concern that the wires
between the weather head and the meter might not be in the best of
shape.

First thing weird that happened was that my microwave stopped working,
and I figured that it was just old and something failed.

Over the next few weeks I had 3 CFLs fail and I finally got suspicious
that something was amiss when my back-up microwave stopped heating and
when I pushed down the toaster and I saw one light dim and a different
bulb glow brighter.

When I got out my meter I found some circuits at 140+ volts and some
down around 80 volts.

I checked everything I could think of and finally my suspicions came
to rest on the two hots being shorted before the meter but after the
weather head. I called the power company and made an appointment for
the next day and went out and purchased 100 feet of wire to replace
the old wires.


When the guy got there he found that the first guy had not properly
spliced the neutral, and effectively I had no neutral.

A quick splice and all was again good. Good except for the $100 down
the drain for wire.

Anyway To address your question about the water pipes, you should bond
all of the metal pipes back to the ground bus in your panel and to
each other. There should also be a jumper going around your water
meter and around the water heater. You should also bond the gas pipes
also.

Roger Shoaf

On 12/29/2010 11:09 AM, RS at work wrote:

When I got out my meter I found some circuits at 140+ volts and some
down around 80 volts.

This is the classic indication of a failed neutral. it can fry
EVERYTHING in your house, from light bulbs to computers and TV sets,
and furnaces and AC units, too.

You want to get this fixed as quick as you can when the symptom shows up.

Jon

Jon Elson wrote:
On 12/29/2010 11:09 AM, RS at work wrote:

When I got out my meter I found some circuits at 140+ volts and some
down around 80 volts.

This is the classic indication of a failed neutral. it can fry
EVERYTHING in your house, from light bulbs to computers and TV sets,
and furnaces and AC units, too.

You want to get this fixed as quick as you can when the symptom shows up.

Jon

Exactly what I was about to say. A couple of other points: This
situation can also raise the voltage on neutral, usually just a good
tingle, but potentially more. Also, this can only happen if the ground
rods are ineffective. So, to "RS at work": check your ground rod wiring.

Bob

On 2010-12-29, Rich Grise wrote:

[ ... ]

Once, in some Ham magazine, they used copper pipe for a ground rod; they
attached a garden hose fitting, and the water pressure loosened the dirt,
so they could about drive it in with their bare hands.

Hydraulic drilling. I used to do that as a kid -- shoving
perhaps twenty feet of garden hose into the rather hard ground in South
Texas. Worked fine as long as the water keeps flowing.

But -- it may take a while for the surrounding dirt to settle
into good contact with the pipe -- after the water washed a lot of it
away.

I've also seen hydraulic drilling used to route fiber optics
data lines under roads. The company which did it was called "Flo-Mole"
IIRC.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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