dun":dkc77xwr said:
In our soil (laugh here) you can;t drive anything very deep. I use the post hole auger on the tractor to go down as far as it will go, fill the hole with water and when it finally, usually after a couple of days to a week, I drive the ground rod then refill the hole.
I've heard descriptions of Missouri's soil conditions, and they sound eerily similar to mine.. I've been lucky to get 2' down on most of the post holes I've dug by hand, and it usually takes breaking the ends off of several 3-4" thick limestone rocks before you can get that deep.. Eventually, you hit "the big one" that spans the entire hole at the bottom and laughs in your face when you hit it with a spudbar. All you can hope is that you don't it it about 15" down and have to start a new hole. Been there, done that.
I say 15" because I've been known to call one good enough at 18" if I had to fight real hard to get that deep.
For the ground rods, I'm really pinning all my hope on that one little patch on my place where I buried a 9" auger bit to the powerhead three times without hitting a rock or otherwise getting hung up -- with an 8N Ford... :shock: It's a strange little flat spot at the end of a shallow holler (or a 'shaller' holla, depending) where the water runs with every rain - but not hard enough to actually cut a channel.. It just sorta fans out over the grass for a while before it collects itself and
then goes into a channel on the neighbor's place.
If I can't get them driven, plan B is to plow a few furrows down there and horizontally bury a few 20' sections of galvanized pipe and use those for grounds.. I don't wanna have to do that, but if it comes to it....