Do you water your ground rod?

I have been, and it still hasn’t grown. I did sprinkle some time-release fertilizer pellets around it last week, and for added impact, some compost!

I’ve ordered one of these for future use. I’m curious how the ground resistance reads when I believe my system is sounding its best. I feel like it sounds better the day after a rain or sprinklers run, but I could just be expectation bias.

http://www.etcrmeter.com/product/info?id=687

The rod work is still scheduled to happen as soon as my guy wraps up his big enterprise project.

Aha! Thank you for the tip. Good reason to cease using Guardex Algicide 60 in our pool!

Interesting readings. I can see more leakage current flowing to the grounding connection that has the least resistance, which is the water pipe.

Next will be taking these readings after doing the Epsom salt treatment. And following that, another set of readings after the new grounding rods are installed.

Breaker panel back yard


Front yard ground rod


Water main connected to front yard ground rod


I use deep artisan water, that is first cryogenically treated for 91 hours, then heated for 100 hours. It is then aged in pH-neutral stoneware for 11.765 days.
The sound is amazing, and my refrigerator cools faster and more consistently. My light bulbs are brighter, and my AC quieter.

Amazing!

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I thought you were going to say you use that for your espresso machine. But it’s even better to water your system with it!

I could try using espresso to wet the rod, hmm :thinking:

That would increase jitter.:man_shrugging:t2:

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Decaf espresso—can’t touch the stuff! I keep the good stuff for drinking!

Phenomenal :rofl:

Last night we heard a noise and it was crazy Arthur from down the block. He was watering our ground rod again. I just shooed him away. His poor wife, ya know.

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Based on some experimental success a good friend has had, I’m modifying my grounding plan to incorporate some new features.

For each grounding station, there will be a 10’ rod driven deep into the ground. A 3 foot long, 3" diameter copper pipe with small holes cross drilled through it’s length will be placed around the rod. The soil in a 2 foot diameter around the pipe will be modified to include a mix of compacted soil, quartz crystals and graphite crystals. The pipe interior will be filled with magnesium sulfate crystals (Epsom salt). The copper will be fused to 4 awg solid copper wire that will run in parallel from each ground station back to a grounding buss bar.

What am I looking to achieve?

A hybrid of the lower noise floor seen with decreased ground resistance, but also the effects CAD, Entreq and other ground conditioning boxes bring.

As promised a progress report.
My first trawl through the internet indicated that powdered clay products (e.g. Bentonite) could do the job, retaining water for much longer periods and hence maintaining a low resistivity to earth (3 ohm-metre). I then found another product (Marconite) which claims a much lower resistivity (0.001 ohm-metre). Details are here:

https://www.durransgroup.com/product-overview/marconite/

and in more detail (which is worth reading):

This looked very promising so I went to a local dealer (Edmundson Electrical, which has branches throughout the UK) to buy the smallest 25kg bag. It is not cheap (~£60) but on top of this there was a £40 transport cost to deliver it on a pallet! I was on the verge of walking away when the store manager (who I guess had noted my adverse reaction to the cost) walked out and said "Had I tried Cat Litter? He explained that cheapest litter was powdered clay (Fuller’s earth). He had used this in several earthing applications he’d been contracted to do with no complaints.

So I’ve gone down this route, buying 2 x 10kg bags (total cost £8). I dug a tapered cylindrical hole 60cm deep, round the earthing rod (as in the installation diagram in the above PDF). I then filled the bottom 40cm with the cat litter. I then thought: Why not use this hole as a soak-away for the rainwater from our porch as the down-pipe from the gutter is adjacent? I therefore laid a pipe in a trench from there to the earthing-rod hole which I then filled up with top-soil.

Does it work?
The Jury is still out as we have not had any substantial rain for several weeks. I’ve regularly topped up the earthing-rod hole via the soak-away (to make the dry cat litter ‘clump’ and more conductive) and the SQ is good but I won’t be able say conclusively until we have heavy rain. If his brings significantly better SQ then I guess I may have to consider replacing the cat litter with Marconite (which the Store Manager had suggested if the cat litter did not work).

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The thing about adding more conductive soil is to mix it in through as much of the length and around the grounding pole as possible so that the soil itself becomes more conductive to the surrounding soil. That’s what lowers resistance.

If you’re doing just top work, adding epsom salt is still best as it percolates in between the soil granules and improves the conductivity that way.

Thanks for the tip on the marconite; I’m going to look into that. I originally thought to use graphite, but it’s a little soft a material. Marconite seems much better suited to fill the gaps between the quartz crystals.

I had to stick to the original plan for now, running four 1" diameter 10ft long ground rods offset 18" deep into the front yard. We placed the initial rod 12 ft from the current rod and 12ft separation between each new rod down to the sidewalk. A continuous 4awg solid wire was bonded to each rod with 180lbs of clamping pressure and bonded to the original front yard ground rod.

The result of the work is a 4x decrease in ground resistance.

Before

After

On initial listen, there’s a remarkable improvement to details. There was already a component-level improvement with the new Inakustik power cables and conditioning, but this ground change has further clarified microdetails, stage presence and ease of isolating voices in space.

I’m very pleased with the results.

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Impressive

it is possible to over engineer a solution - fear of missing out is a beast that sometimes must be quelled :slight_smile:

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Yes… Still, for the possible amusement of anyone reading my post that joma was replying to, I’m just gonna keep the line that I was serious.
Okay… Half.

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An update on my September 9 post.

We’ve now had some significant rain followed by several weeks with almost no rain. The improvements in sound quality I noticed have remained unchanged through this period, as far as I can tell. The large changes in sound quality I had before doing this work are no longer evident so I’d recommend the approach I took (£8 + 1 day labour).

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vee, since you have a VERY gargantuan grounding system, and yes a very low grounding impedance - how much of an improvement has it brought to your audio system’s performance? Since we’re talking external grounding here, as in basically what would be considered safety ground, I’m wondering how much it can have to do with component performance and not just surplus safety (which is great in itself)
I have understood that without a balanced mains installation a la Equitech, the ground can easily be contaminated and leak noise back into equipment - is this really mitigated by having lower and lower grounding impedance by traditional means as in would this contamination be directed outside better or is the phenomenon actually local in the circuit of the equipment? I don’t understand grounding well enough to deduce, would like to hear what you’ve heard. From your speakers.
Of course, if you have your chassii RF grounded by specialized means into your low impedance safety ground, there would be great benefit no doubt. This much I understand. Do you have such installation? If you don’t, do attain it - Russ Andrews has a great solution.