Grounding rod Q for electric fencing

Boondox · Sep 20, 2004

( i missed something, are you hooking your fence charger to some kind of fence, other than solid single strand electric fence wire? all the chargers i have messed with, don't have the power output to handle being hooked to other type fences. i tried an 8x10x6 chain link dog pen once, and it just wouldn't power the fence..thats where their rating of ???miles comes in..
heehaw )

We presently use Premier electrified mesh. It comes in lengths of 165' with fiberglass rods you stick in the ground every ten feet. They come with little metal tabs so you can link several lengths together. If I use only the sheep fencing, the deterrent value is pretty high for up to 4 or 5 lengths given our little charger. Add the poultry fencing, with much finer mesh, and the output drops dramatically.

So the plan is to use our existing small charger only for the poultry netting (which yields a good, solid 6000V bite) and get a larger charger for when we install that semi-permanent electrified perimeter.

Pete

Varmintmist · Sep 20, 2004

If your fencer is plugged in, there should be a ground that goes all the way back to the power line and the MGN (multi grounded neutral) That is THE BEST ground you are going to find. Even if you put in ground rods you should be bonded to the MGN because if you arent then there is a differance in potential and thats how lightning related fires start, along with loss of equipment that is hooked to the electric.

Now, with the seprate rods. The spacing of the rod depends on the lenth of the rod, a 5 foot rod must be a minimum of 5 foot from its neighbor, same for 8' and 10'. DO NOT use steel or aluminum to bond all of the rods together, you WILL get bimetacular corrsion (different metals act like a battery and corrode fast) which will lead to a loss of ground. 10 gauge bare copper would be the minimum, 6 ga would be better. Brass clamps all around.

Soundguy · Sep 20, 2004

( i tried an 8x10x6 chain link dog pen once, and it just wouldn't power the fence )

What did you have insulating the dog kennel from ground?

Soundguy

kensfarm · Sep 20, 2004

When I was looking up fencing.. I came across this:

Do not install ground rods within 50 ft. of a utility ground rod, buried
telephone line, or buried water-line (they may pick up stray voltage). This is
evident if you receive pulsing shocks from water spigots or water tanks or if
you hear the pulse of the fence controller in your phone, television, or radio.

Inspector507 · Sep 20, 2004

kensfarm,
I was thinking that same thing. These fencers are a lot different than your typical electric setup in the house. Besides a ground rod is a ground rod, you'll get the same reference to ground if you drive a new one and it won't send the impulses back through the house ground.

Just my thoughts, I have no experience with fences and chargers.

Varmintmist · Sep 20, 2004

Yes stray voltage can go into the phone and electric line, when the ground is imbalanced. I have taken the noise out of phone lines by making a ground field for someones fencer. I could be wrong with bonding the fence to MGN. I shall endevor to look it up. However MGN is the best ground available.

Ground is ground the world around, WRONG . If you look up the codes you now have to bond your phone line and catv and water pipe to MGN. If you drive a ground rod on the other side of your house it IS more than likely at a different potential then the other. If you meggar a rod and get 7 ohms and go 100 feet and meggar a different rod odds are you wont get 7 ohms, and anything other than that is a difference in potential. People have lost houses and barns this way. 30-40 years ago it was practice to ground elec and phone seperatley, not any more.

Varmintmist · Sep 20, 2004

I was wrong on bonding to MGN, My bust /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Its a Pavlov's dog kinda thing, if you knew how many poles I climbed to stick on a little clamp on ammeter.................... I salivate at the word ground /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif The reason you dont want it to MGN is the pwr and phone ground are for protection and leakage and the fence ground is a actual return. Makes sense now that I think of it. so solly

While looking for my error I did find somthing though, you want the ground field to be as close the fencer as possible to make the return path eaiser. So down by the pond will probably not be the best place for your ground field. Putting it farther away will force the return to look for the path of least resistance, which could be your house ground and you could noise up your phone.

Inspector507 · Sep 20, 2004

30-40 years ago it was practice to ground elec and phone seperatley, not any more 

Thats because they're in the same structure and more likely to come in contact with each other. They want them all to be the same so there is no potential difference between them.

heehaw · Sep 20, 2004

even though the fence charger is plugged into the ac outlet, with a 2 prong ac plug, the output ground of the charger may not be connected to the ac ground or return, unless the installer does it externally...some chargers have 2 prong ac plugs, some 3. if you feel confident in being able to determine the neutral/return wire from the hot wire, you could try hooking it to the neutral...and see if it causes any static on the phone etc..i've only run into static like that when there was a bad connection and it was arching.
i've never seen the type of fence that is being used, all i have seen around here is the tape, which has fine wires run thru it, and wire. the pen i tried to hook up once was sitting on old tires, i even called the manufactuer of the charger, and was told it was doubtful it would work very well, because of the amount of wire that was trying to be energized. it worked fairly well, but it wasn't as "hot" as i thought it should be, or as evenly dispersed, which could have been because of poor connections between the chain link wires. the dog would still get out occasionally???
heehaw

Boondox · Sep 20, 2004

( I was wrong on bonding to MGN, My bust /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Its a Pavlov's dog kinda thing, if you knew how many poles I climbed to stick on a little clamp on ammeter.................... I salivate at the word ground /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif The reason you dont want it to MGN is the pwr and phone ground are for protection and leakage and the fence ground is a actual return. Makes sense now that I think of it. so solly

While looking for my error I did find somthing though, you want the ground field to be as close the fencer as possible to make the return path eaiser. So down by the pond will probably not be the best place for your ground field. Putting it farther away will force the return to look for the path of least resistance, which could be your house ground and you could noise up your phone. )

Okay, let me give you some idea of the layout. 200 amp power comes into the house from a pole across the dirt road, and is split into twin 100 amp circuit breaker boxes in the basement. One serves the house and the other the outbuildings. That second box has 70 amps running to the woodshop via the full width of the basement, across the breezeway, and into the shop for a distance of about 50'. From the shop subpanel, 50 amps runs via underground conduit to another subpanel in the garage. A single 20 amp run goes another 40' to the fence charger mounted on the side of the coop. Another 50' beyond the coop is the pond, which represents the only spot within a hundred yards where I can pound the entire length of a grounding rod into the ground. All other locations I hit solid granite at a max depth of three feet. So my choices, unless I can dig a big trench and bury a grounding rod sideways, are a series of three foot long rods right next to the coop...or a series of six foot rods fifty feet further away from the house.

Which is best? Pete /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif