Ouch, my ground!
May 10, 2006
Well, I just got a lesson in proper electrical grounding last night. Tonya woke up in the middle of the night to hear a “clicking” sound coming from the GFI outlet in our upstairs bathroom. As it turns out, I just happened to be transmitting on 40 meters (around 7.200 khz). The clicking and poppings sounds culminated in the GFI actually tripping, though the clicking didn’t cease.
When we remodeled our upstairs, I took stock in that bathroom’s wiring. I almost updated it, but we weren’t working on the bathroom, so I left it alone. The previouso owners of the house had remodeled that bathroom a number of years ago and, at the time, there was no grounding system for the house. Code requires a GFI in the bathroom, and a GFI requires, well, a ground! Since there was no ground, the electrician connected the GFI’s ground connection to the water pipes.
Which, coincidentally, I also did for my radio… in the basement. Now, there’s a quite a distance from my water meter (where my radio’s ground is connected) to the ground pole. I do have a solid copper line running from the water pipe ground to the ground rod (as per code), but I think it’s too long to be running the radio on. Basically, my ground wire has become part of the antenna. That’s not good.
So I think I’ll be getting a ground rod tonight and driving it into the ground closer to the side of the basement where my radio is. Then I’ll run a copper line between it and the other ground rod. Wonder what that’s going to cost me…
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 am
Wow…interesting, and frustrating, how electrical currents will play havoc with your home! How did things end up turning out for you with this little bit o’ fun?
By the way, I finally got on board with the 21st century and redid my website using WordPress with some guidance from Korey…take a gander if you have a minute, and feel free to throw any comments/feedback my way…as it’s still very much new!