I understand the need for distance when placing rods what I'm saying is there should never be an exception to your resistance.
Yes you will obviously get better conductivity compared to dry earth the resistance on our house will increase a fair bit during the end of summer until the rains come in spring.
That's not a bad idea tbf why did I never think of it
No
I tried using a plus for it, it took FOREVER! Gotta have a max to pound through red clay!
Thinking it's more to do with lightning and how well the GFCI works as well as other sensitive equipment, average human resistance for a cardiac event is 400 ohm at 220V so as long as we have a ground well below that it's all good.
Nothing to do with lighting. This is electrical safety. Lighting protection is a completely different system.
Ahh right I guess this is where your confused type-b GFCI devices weren't a mandate in the UK until recently and still only on new installations so as far as DC the ground is your primary protection not the GFCI. More Worrying is that unless it's a new install many people in the UK still don't have any form of earth loop safety device so the earth is their primary protection for AC also.
The grounding system is not the protection.
Please read my statement when the GFCI doesn't trip with DC current (type A which is only a recent change to British regulations that specifies type B) or there is no GFCI,RCD,RCBO or ELB the earth is the primary protection hence why they are so focused on earth being below 5ohms.
The earth provides no protection, on its own.
I put in some communications gear in the "sandhills" of NC that spec'd Three(3) Ohms or less. Not possible in that soil. We got it down to 7 if memory serves. I think we had 8 ground rods. They were talking a "ground mesh" or something when the manufacturer rep and engineers backed off. I've never tested here, but I'd bet my two ground rods are drastically lower in this dirt.
Watch the Holt videos. It's about pathing of the potential This is why you have only one tie point to your ground array. If there is a path electricity will follow it, thus you don't want more than one path to earth. In this case we are trying to protect from an intentionally generated potential creating a fault/path potential where it should not be. The ground in this case is used to detect the fault and trip a breaker. Not static suppression (aka lightning).
Im curious to how its measured. Does the inspector have his own ground rod he pokes in the dirt 10 inches and tells you how your 8ft ground rod isnt enough???
Contrary to what ksmithaz1 said earlier large industrial earthing like this will likely have multiple paths to earth and they use stakeless testing where you test one rod at a time by inducing a voltage then recording the current flow. Single path as you said you drive in stakes and measure
For someone to get shocked from generated electricity, they must complete a circuit.
I'm not sure what you are saying. You can run as many ground rods as you want, you should tie them to a single point somewhere above the earth. Everything above the earth needs to tie to that point. We were dinking around in a modest single story L shaped office building. Power company guys laughed out loud when we said we needed 3 ohms to ground.
