Ditch Witch at your local equipment rental store unless you can hire a couple of kids cheap to do the digging.

 

Thanks. That trenching shovel might be useful this spring for adding another dedicated network cable to the remote backup server in the shed.

One of the hardest parts of the job was hammering in a new ground rod to add to the house grounding grid (three total rods bonded). The antennas, power and comm cables are all surge protected and needed a good local ground for lightning protection. Proper user network device surge protection ( to reduce Ethernet port fried issues) with power-line Ethernet can be an issue because with works better with a direct copper to copper connection on both ends without the signal sucking filtering protection circuits seen on many surge protected power strips.
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You might find this tool interesting:

 

One of the hardest parts of the job was hammering in a new ground rod to add to the house grounding grid

Ahh... ground rods. They way I do those is with a garden hose and copper pipe.

For a ⅝” ground rod I use a ½“ copper pipe sweated to a T with 2 small sections of pipe for a handle (I usually use a reducing T and make the handles out of 1”).

On one handle a cap is sweated, on other a standard hose fitting, it’s nice to have one with a stopcock but you don’t have to.

Position the pipe upright where you want the rod and turn on the water. Gentle pressure will drive the pipe into the ground with amazing ease, assuming there aren’t rocks or roots to contend with, in which case it;s time for an auger.

You should have some solid to put into the hole loosely until it is filled up, then drive the rod which will go in with almost no resistance. Tamp around the top to pack it a bit. If you have a real tamper, great—if not, a foot with a good boot is enough.

Also, consider getting some conduit of the continuous plastic kind and put that in, then when you pull (or push) the cable include a pull string so expansion is just a matter of adding something to the conduit. It also allows you to use less expensive plenum cable rather than direct burial.

 

Ahh... ground rods. They way I do those is with a garden hose and copper pipe.

For a ⅝” ground rod I use a ½“ copper pipe sweated to a T with 2 small sections of pipe for a handle (I usually use a reducing T and make the handles out of 1”).

On one handle a cap is sweated, on other a standard hose fitting, it’s nice to have one with a stopcock but you don’t have to.

Position the pipe upright where you want the rod and turn on the water. Gentle pressure will drive the pipe into the ground with amazing ease, assuming there aren’t rocks or roots to contend with, in which case it;s time for an auger.

You should have some solid to put into the hole loosely until it is filled up, then drive the rod which will go in with almost no resistance. Tamp around the top to pack it a bit. If you have a real tamper, great—if not, a foot with a good boot is enough.

Also, consider getting some conduit of the continuous plastic kind and put that in, then when you pull (or push) the cable include a pull string so expansion is just a matter of adding something to the conduit. It also allows you to use less expensive plenum cable rather than direct burial.

Is there a way to transmit ethernet between two ground rods? (Otherwise, you might just be a tad off topic!)
There's been enough favourable comments that I've decided to get the TP-Link TLPA4010P and give it a try. Otherwise I'll go for a something like a TP-Link CPE210. I'll report back in about a week!

 

I feel for you guys. Down here in the sand lands I can put in an 8' ground rod mostly by hand. At least until there is only 2-3' left exposed and then tap it on down with an 8lb sledge. Not drive, but simply tap it down. The water-jet method mentioned above is how we put in shallow wells for lawn irrigation systems. 1" PVC jacket/well casing and a 1/2" PVC jet pipe. Simply put the small pipe inside the larger and turn the water on. The eductor siphoning action pulls the dirt out of the casing so you need to use short sections of casing and add more as cuts its way down. Can easily do 40-60' in a couple of days. The first couple of sections of the casing have longitudinal slits in it to allow ground water to seep into the pipe. Once ground water is hit (most septic tanks have to be filled with water during installation to keep them from floating out of the ground) another 10-15' is drilled to allow a water column in the casing. The 1/2" pipe has a well point added to filter out sand and used to feed the surface pump.

 

Is there a way to transmit ethernet between two ground rods? (Otherwise, you might just be a tad off topic!)
There's been enough favourable comments that I've decided to get the TP-Link TLPA4010P and give it a try. Otherwise I'll go for a something like a TP-Link CPE210. I'll report back in about a week!

Well, if you can tolerate a very low data rate I think we can work something out.

 

Well, if you can tolerate a very low data rate I think we can work something out.

Like my broadband used to be when it came down 5 miles of local loop!

 

Mine are only separated by ~30-40' of wiring and the only test I have is the speed test of my data connection and it is 96.66Mhz of the full 100Mhz and that includes all the externals from here to the next state. So no idea how it would do from PC to host data server.

 

First results:
I tried it at work, where we have 75Mbit/s, and used Ookla Speedtest to determine performance.
single 25m extension lead (1.5mm^2), and two 25m extension leads connected together was still 75Mbit/s.
From electronics lab, via a sub-board, a main distribution board, another main board and to another socket about 30m away, on a different phase = 30Mbit/s
Through 2 sub-boards and 2 main boards on the same phase, all around the factory - longer distance but on the same phase = 10Mbit/second.
It does say in the home-plug spec that it is sent on the neutral wire, but it I still think it did well as it passed by the PME point on the way through the second main distribution board.

I also tried it connected at the output of a Victron 5kW inverter (which has neutral and earth directly connected) and in close proximity to a 7kW phase-fired thyristor battery charger, and in both cases it managed 75Mbit/s down the 50m extension cables.

 

Thanks everyone for all your comments. I finally installed it, and it gets all the way round the downstairs ring-main, through the distribution board, down about 10m of SWA to the shed, through another sub board to the socket on the bench, and I get 15Mbit/second, a bit of a speed drop compared to the incoming data rate, but acceptable.

Only snag is the size of the unit - when plugged into the socket there was no room for the Ethernet cable, so I had to rotate the socket by 90°. Looks a bit odd but it works.

 

Thanks everyone for all your comments. I finally installed it, and it gets all the way round the downstairs ring-main, through the distribution board, down about 10m of SWA to the shed, through another sub board to the socket on the bench, and I get 15Mbit/second, a bit of a speed drop compared to the incoming data rate, but acceptable.

Only snag is the size of the unit - when plugged into the socket there was no room for the Ethernet cable, so I had to rotate the socket by 90°. Looks a bit odd but it works.

Great news, and 15Mbit beats 0Mbit every time.

 

To be perfectly honest, it works much better than I ever thought it would. I remember the really buzzy intercom I made all those years ago.

 

I remember the really buzzy intercom I made all those years ago.

That might have been an AM-based unit. Long ago I picked up some for about $2 each on the surplus market. Turns out they were overpriced.

ak

 

You might find this tool interesting:

That's a bit of genius in its simplicity. I've driven ground rods with a hammer drill, but it still involves a ladder. Using a tight hole in the plate to grab the rod is one of those things that you see and ask why you didn't think of it yourself.

 

My experience with powerline networking was that it wasn't as robust; one unit would time out and give up if I was too late plugging in the other one. I was attempting to get network access from the main office to outbuildings at a historical site that needed online payment processing, because in 2023 people are less inclined to pay in chickens or beaver pelts or cash. We ended up going with outdoor-rated WiFi devices from TP-Link, which are cheap, but can be managed remotely ("Omada") so that adding a new access point took about 3 clicks. I think I ended up getting better than 125 Mbps out to the ticket booth.

Most TP-Link stuff is supported by alternative firmware like OpenWRT, but I haven't needed to try that yet. A hasty search reveals there is some central management software like OpenWISP.