hurk27
Senior Member
- Location
- Portage, Indiana NEC: 2008
I appreciate the comments, Hurk. And something else dawned on me from reading your post.
I can see that some would have taken this thread to be a blanket statement from me that an OCPD could be tripped through earth anywhere on the planet. That was not my intention. I understand that everyone nowadays is taught that the earth /electrode sucks as a conductor at lower voltages. I think this is why some people got upset. My result went against the norm and the beliefs. What my test showed is that it isn't quite so cut and dried.
With the limitations of the written word on the net, as opposed to direct talk, my question was meant to be "Is there even a single case possible where a fault through dirt could trip a breaker at 120 volts?" I never ever believed or even implied that dirt/electrodes the world over could carry enough current to trip the OCPD. Before I even did the test, my belief was that most areas had soil with very high resistance. I also knew that my black clay soil was a pretty good conductor and I wanted to test it.
The whole thing started from that "grounding electrode question" thread when Iwire said that a ground fault through earth, under 600 volts, could never trip an OCPD.
So my experiment wasn't a blanket statement of proving that this would work anywhere. Essentially I was proving to myself that there is at least one place in the world where current through dirt tripped my OCPD.
Now I'm kind of getting at what your objective was, and as you said it wasn't too clear in the beginning, but as a whole I think the thread turned out to be a learning tool for a few members, I have lived in other parts of the country and I have had a few places where low resistance was very possible, like salt water areas around south Florida, and like your area most of Florida has a very high water table along with the fact it's also not very high above sea level, but working in many other areas has also enlightened me to the realities of these other places like here we have many areas that used to be the old shores of lake Michigan which are nothing but dry sand dunes grown over, as deep as you want to go, so with a perspective on both sides I understand the disbelief in some who have had a very hard time reaching a low impedance on a rod there whole career, but I like to share what I have learned over the years and even sometimes it gets miss-applied to a wrong thread, Grounding to earth is one of my better understandings in the electrical world, but I still keep an open mind, like I was always told the Earth as a whole had a resistance of .05 ohms, and it wasn't until I saw the papers on the 500kv DC SWER feed I think from Europe to another place where they were able to account for all the power loss in just the single conductor proving that the Earth in fact has an over all resistance of 0 ohms. so every day I still keep learning, and even some time re-learn things I have long forgotten you know the good ol CRS syndrome
But it is good brain exercise to discuss things like this if not for ourselves but for the many who are reading these threads.
When Bennie was around many times we would hook up in AOL and talk till the wee hours on this stuff, he would make you think out of the box.
Like I said I have done a few radio towers and have had to get the engineered specs of .5 ohms, not always easy but possible. Lightning and Earth grounding was one of my studies at university of Florida back in "78" as it was tied to getting my FCC 2nd class communication license, But much time has passed and I never went that route and let it go back, and more or less stayed with the electrical end.
Well I think I'm rambling, but Gary keep up the interest of doing the out of the box experiments, just keep it safe.