ground rod question [RE-wrenches]

[Drake Chamberlin]

I had a ground rod driver made up by a welder close to two decades
ago, and it works great to this day. 


It is like a fence post driver, but heavier and has no handles. It is
made out of a 2 1/2 foot long piece of two inch ID metal gas pipe,
with a large slug of metal welded in the closed end.  


It is powerful enough to split through many boulders, or bend the rods
around them.   I'm not totally sure what happens underground, but I've
driven in many rods in extremely rocky areas in the Rocky Mountains. 


Unless the ground is known to be soft to deep levels, I go in at a 45
degree angle, as permitted by the code.  This way, even if you do hit
solid rock, the rod can bend and follow the surface of the rock
layer.  


The last 2 1/2 feet, I drive in with a hand sledge with a 16" handle,
since the length of the pounder prevents using the tool for the last
bit.  This works far better than a full sized sledge, since you can
give sharp rapsto the end of the rod.  A larger sledge generally tends
to bend the rod more than knock it in.  An experienced railroad spike
driver would likely do well with a full sized sledge hammer.


My $.02


Drake 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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