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Drill/Hammer for installing earth rods.

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Discuss Drill/Hammer for installing earth rods. in the Electrical Tools and Products area at ElectriciansForums.net

richy3333

richy3333

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I'm fed up with whacking these things in by hand and so have decided to by a drill/hammer for putting these blighters into the ground. Around here the earth is not obliging so I'm looking for something with some power. Just wondered what other people use and what sort of power (joules?) other could recommend?

Thanks
 
I would suggest a small/medium sized jack hammer with a suitable attachment.

[ElectriciansForums.net] Drill/Hammer for installing earth rods.
 
If your driving rods into crap soil conditions with higher than usual resistance values, try using a powered fence post auger. You can get a local machine shop or the like, to extend the auger bit shaft to have an overall length of a metre or so. You can then drive your coupled rod into the bottom of the made hole and have the top metre or so of the rod surrounded by ''Bentonite'' (soil to rod enhancer) or Mactonite (conductive mortar). Both will greatly improve your Ra values and just as importantly your rods stability...

As for SDS driving of earth rods, i drove all my house rods in with a standard Makita SDS, with a home made drive tool made from an old cut down SDS point chisel with a suitable sized (old) long reach socket welded to it. Have one for both 5/8'' and 3/4'' rods... Wouldn't say that the ground around my house is soft either, but can see where particularly hard ground could possibly need a an SDS with a bit more punch to it...lol!!!
 
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We also have a home-made slide hammer for areas where there's no power. Looks a bit like this except there's an inner tube that you put over the rod and it stays static and then an outer tube that slides over it and weighs about 7-8 kilos. You get a good workout whilst using it but for some reason the guys prefer the jackhammer so it only gets used occasionally.

[ElectriciansForums.net] Drill/Hammer for installing earth rods.
 
of course , once you've sank rods using a pneumatic 20kg jack hammer , theres no going back lol.
3metres of rod fired in under 60 seconds - no sweat.
 
Many thanks for the replies. I've actually been paying someone to install the rods for me under my supervision, but am feeling that it would be better to use that money for some better equipment to install them than blowing it on their 'wages' etc.

I like Eng54 idea about getting some 'tools' welded up. I have a friend that could do that for me :)


I've been thinking along the lines of a 9 Kilo SDS Max combi hammer that will do around 2000 blows per minute and have a maximum impact energy of 18 joules.
I'm wondering if my idea of a standard SDS drill isn't the same as others - i.e. mine's certainly too weak for rods!
 
Engineer54 said:
So what does the guy you pay use, to drive the rods in??
Click to expand...
It's all manual labour - spade, A percy (Sledge-hammer), digging bar and a fence post whacker. The agreement is he has to keep going until I say stop. Usually he does 2 rods, I Ra test and then tell him how many more before testing again, etc until we get a low(ish) Ra reading etc
 

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