ground rod for electric fencer

tomNE

Member
It seems to me, someone had some good advice, but for the life of me, i can't remember what that advice was. i have the fencer hanging on steel post. used buffing wheel to take rust off of post and 5ft peice of rebar i pounded 3ft deep. then took a bucket of water and soaked area around the post. fencer works better but i still think the ground is holding it back.
 
You are asking a lot of 3 foot of dirt! Wow.

Think proper is 3 galvanized rods 6 foot each, burry them nearly 6 feet, spaced a couple feet apart.

At least get yourself one good ground rod, and pound that sucker in all the way, you need to get down deep, into moisture. ESP in Nebraska,
you are in dry dirt probably, you need to get deep.

Paul
 
How big a fencer? My 110 volt one has 3 10ft galvanised
rods in about 9ft deep. If you don't intend taking the
ground rod out ever, then go with the longest rod you can
put in.if you are in a dry region, I've heard the setting
the rod in with Benoite can help has it help conduct the
electricity... Rust is an insulator, so keeping the ground
rod rust free helps.
 
The old re-bar ground doesn't work very good. I use the copper coated ground rods like you buy for your house. If you're on ground that stays relatively moist you can cut them in half. Most of the fence instructions show an array of like 6 ground rods 8 feet apart but even using two of the full length ones will work way better than re-bar.
 
Me I use copper rods driven as deep as I can but then I also have them in all my buildings as a ground rod for the electric boxes.
 
The check light for checking the electric fence has a prong about two inches long. Seems to work as well 1/2" in the ground as it does sticking it in all the way. Any thing that will not rust in the ground driven in a couple feet has worked for me since 1960 when I first used an electric fence charger. I am still using that first fence charger by the way. Five years ago I drove a chrome coated pipe from a junk bathroom shelf in the ground about two feet when I set up the one horse lot. I just made three wraps of the wire around the pipe and twisted it tight with pliers. Still works well. I bought the second charger and did the same at the barn.
 

The garage door operator in our new to us home that we moved into a couple of years ago, would not close without hold the wall button until it was closed all the way.
I found that the safety photo cells wires joints were only twisted together, I added wire nuts, now it works.
So be carful about only twisting the wires to the ground rod. I may work good today but not tomorrow.
 
I used 3 each 6 foot ground rods, placed 10 apart, never had the slightest problem. These specs were recommended by the fencer mfg. Tom
 
It has been working five years. If the horses get out I will give it a check. Just don't like to bend down all that well if not forced to. :)^D
 
In a home any metal pipe be it gas or water, it's required that they be grounded/bonded with the ground from the electric panel.

Dusty
 
Don't go cheap on the ground rods get the copper ones at least three 10 feet apart, you will never regret it and your fencer will work better than ever
 
We have bedrock at 3' in places and one was where the fence charger was. Someone used an old shower curtain rod, gets dry and then wonders why its not working. I went through the entire place and installed new copper clad ground rods. In this shallow soil location I was able to get (3) 3' lengths to bedrock, spaced 6' on center. I used ground clamps and #10 copper wire to the fence charger, soaked the area and it sent off a nice jolt when you touched it. This is fine sand material, so it does dry faster in the summer, but one soaking a day worked well.
 

What about the ground the cow is standing on... its only gonna shock as good as the ground where the animal stands,,,, and the path through the ground all the back to the charger.

In lots of areas they use a two wire fence. One to hot, the other to ground... Animal is guaranteed to get the point. Distance is no longer a problem other than weeds.
 
All good advice and I would add one more. Real copper rod as long as you can drive into the ground. Also I soldered the wire to the copper rod. Wrap it around a couple of times and solder it. Made a diff. In really dry weather the animals will not get grounded well enough. Double wire deal works very well.
 
(quoted from post at 17:00:14 09/18/15) All good advice and I would add one more. Real copper rod as long as you can drive into the ground. Also I soldered the wire to the copper rod. Wrap it around a couple of times and solder it. Made a diff. In really dry weather the animals will not get grounded well enough. Double wire deal works very well.

I got everything working great.
 

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