Grounding Question

[MrDogDad]

I have a Dish 500 system with a 942 that was installed about 2 years ago by a retailer, and it was never grounded. It is wall mounted on the side of the house about 60 feet from the electric service entrance.

I'm going to upgrade to a 722 so I'll need a Dish 1000 or additional dish and I'd like to have a ground available for the installer. I'm concerned that he'll want to install the new dish on the roof, close to the existing ground, and I like having having it where I can get to it without climbing a ladder.

I'm planning on running a bare 6 AWG wire from the existing ground rod through the crawl space to the dish mount. Will this be acceptable or do I need to have an additional ground rod near the dish, connected to the 6 gauge wire? Or can the installer just connect a ground to the air conditioner disconnect about 10 feet away?

[bairdjc]

actually it's preferible that the dish and equip have the SAME ground as the house, not another rod pounded into the ground - so that means connecting it to an existing rod or water pipe, etc is preferible

[Richard King]

I don't believe it is good practice to run the ground inside the structure. Bairdjc is correct also that a single ground point is preferred.

[bairdjc]

from what I've gathered, so long as you ground the dish to the coax (the shielding) and the coax to the house ground, then all is OK. it's more to eliminate possible noise sources than to act as a lightning rod of sorts

[MrDogDad]

Thanks for your answers.
Does anyone think that a Dish installer would have a problem using my existing location for the new dish? Where would they connect the ground? I understand that they are now making sure that installers are installing proper grounds.

[koji68]

Instructions from E*

http://tech.dishnetwork.com/departmental_content/techportal/content/tech/receiver/howto/techmiscgrou.shtml

And make sure that they don't clamp it to just any pipe.

[MrDogDad]

I took another look at the 2005 NEC, and I will have to install a second ground rod, and bond it to the first ground rod with a 6 gauge wire. :(

In researching this, I have been seeing references to NEC article 820.40 for DBS dish grounding. This article was replaced with article 820.100 in the 2005 code. Also, section 820 deals with CATV systems. I would think that article 810 (Radio and Television Equipment) would be more appropriate. The requirements are the same. (810.21)

[jkane]

My installer ran the coax wire into the house, and as it passed by a pipe, he grounded it there i n the middle of the run. You might want to look all along the coax and see if it isn't grounded in the middle, and not at either end like you'd expect.

[MrDogDad]

My installer ran the coax wire into the house, and as it passed by a pipe, he grounded it there i n the middle of the run. You might want to look all along the coax and see if it isn't grounded in the middle, and not at either end like you'd expect.

Nope, it runs straight through. I watched him install it. I should have asked him about the ground when he did the install. I should have known better. I worked as a tech and engineer for NASA's tracking network for 27 years, but this was my first exposure to a DBS system.

I just finished pounding the ground rod in and I should have it bonded to the ground system tomorrow:D