Cell Site Equipment Grounding

[jmellc]

Some time back, I helped a little with a few cell phone tower sites. At one outdoor location, we were told by customer to run our equipment ground to an underground loop and cadweld it. We dug up the loop, which I saw had been nicked several times from earlier digging. We had a few issues getting a good weld, which worked out OK in the end.

What made no sense to me is that there were several above ground plates, also bonded to the loop. A lot of the equipment was grounded to a plate, whichever was closest.

What is the point of repeatedly digging up a loop and causing damage to it when plates are easily accessible? Has anyone else seen this or a similar situation?

 

[ActionDave]

What were you doing? Whatever it was the EGC should have gone from and to wherever all the other circuit conductors went.

There is a tremendous amount of bonding that goes on at cell sites and if that was the case I agree with you there was no reason to dig up a wire and cadweld to it when you can use one of blocks that you saw. Cell engineer guys can be at the very top of the whacko list.

 

[jumper]

Cell engineer guys can be at the very top of the whacko list.

That is because their brains were scrambled when they were exposed to Motorola's R56 manual.

 

[jmellc]

What were you doing? Whatever it was the EGC should have gone from and to wherever all the other circuit conductors went.

There is a tremendous amount of bonding that goes on at cell sites and if that was the case I agree with you there was no reason to dig up a wire and cadweld to it when you can use one of blocks that you saw. Cell engineer guys can be at the very top of the whacko list.

Haha, I suspected as much.