Author Topic: Grounding a TV antenna.  (Read 4826 times)

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petect

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Grounding a TV antenna.
« on: September 29, 2019, 09:42:44 AM »
Hi all.   I recently put up a TV antenna that allows me to get the one station I care about over the air.  I should ground this thing. As I understand it, the right way would be to run the ground wire from the mast and cable braid to the same ground rod that the houses electrical panel is tied to.

I would prefer to do this outside of the house,  since getting the ground wire into the service panel would be a major pain. Making the connection outside would be pretty easy except the ground rod is inside EMT that runs from the meter box to below the ground level.  ( There's a seal on the meter box that I don't want to mess with.)  Complicating things a bit, there are ground wires for the phone, ctv, etc. connected to the EMT so I can't just cut it to get at the wire inside.

There probably is an easy way of doing this, but I sure can't think of it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.   Thanks in advance.

Pete

Mary B

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Re: Grounding a TV antenna.
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2019, 07:29:40 PM »
find a couple clamps big enough to hold the wire to the emt, use anti corrosion paste because of the dissimilar metals issue. if the distance is more than 16'(assuming an 8' rod) add another ground rod at every multiple of 16'. A 4' rod would be 8' intervals(double the ground rod length is rule of thumb). Do not use that cheesy aluminum tv antenna ground wire, get heavy gauge copper, #6 minimum(I uses 2/0 in my system) bare copper.

petect

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Re: Grounding a TV antenna.
« Reply #2 on: September 30, 2019, 12:36:50 PM »
Hi Mary
THANKS for the info. it seems like a very workable solution.
Pete

Mary B

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Re: Grounding a TV antenna.
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2019, 04:02:35 PM »
And run a ground from the antenna mounting structure(if metal) to a ground rod at the closest point below the antenna. In the case of my ham radio towers I run a flexible jumper from above the rotor to the solid copper going down the tower to  rod at he base. Doesn't matter how close that rod is to another(well a couple inches is stupid but a couple feet?) another ground rod. Tower at the west end of my house is like that. Base is 3' from a ground rod. I drove a new rod next to the concrete anyway instead of snaking the wire a foot around the corner to my entrance panel for the ham antennas which has its own system of ground rods in a star pattern.

With 2 towers, a 43' vertical antenna, the solar panels... I have over 16 ground rods in my system spread  in a star pattern away from each tower and survived a direct strike on one of the towers with no damages to antennas or stuff in the house beyond having to replace one of the antenna protection devices. A leader from that strike also hit the observatory shed aluminum frame roof panels then jumped to the telescope pier and grounded through the concrete under it. That blew parts of the roof panel off! That shed sat 75 feet back from the house... and was outside the cone of protection a grounded tower gives you. I DO use commercial grade protection devices, exact same ones the military, broadcasters, cell providers all use. They rarely get knocked off the air during a storm!

DanG

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Re: Grounding a TV antenna.
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2019, 07:54:21 PM »
Rolling Sphere has advantages over cone of protection... huge imaginary ball where it would touch only the lightning terminals (hah! Rods!) and ground/soil so provide protection inside that imaginary arc section?

Forget their sales spiel but note this outfit encourages arc leader dissipation hardware - make a hundred weak spark leaders out of a potential that might win the competition to actually complete a strikes circuit if it propagated as one static arc....

I like the diagrammed structure protected via two grounding points on a diagonal : )



https://www.lbagroup.com/products/lightning-protection-dissipaters-portable-masts-rods

Mary B

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Re: Grounding a TV antenna.
« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2019, 02:34:02 PM »
I could add a porcupine ball protector but since my towers are VHF/UHF I have LOTS of little spikes sticking out to dissipate charge buildup.