Learned a hard lesson about grounding rods at a jobsite in Phoenix

I was on a new build last week in Phoenix and the inspector flagged my grounding rod because it was barely 6 feet deep into rocky soil. He told me I had to drive it all the way to 8 feet or add a second rod. Does anyone else run into trouble with shallow bedrock on residential jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

maxm631mo ago

That whole "barely 6 feet into rocky soil" part really hit home for me. It's like the universe keeps showing me this same pattern over and over. People always want to cut corners and do just enough to barely get by, but nature or codes or whatever always forces you to go deeper. I see it everywhere, not just on job sites. My buddy tried to halfass his sprinkler system last summer, hitting rocks at 2 feet, and now the whole yard floods when it rains hard. Same principle. You can't cheat the ground, man. It's like it knows when you're trying to be lazy and it just laughs at you.

daniel5111mo agoMost Upvoted

I read a thing once about how old-time farmers used to say you gotta dig a fence post deep enough that the frost line can't push it up come winter. Same basic idea. In my neck of the woods, code says 42 inches for a deck footing, and I've seen guys try to stop at 30 because they hit a big rock and figured "close enough." Six months later, that deck is sagging like a old porch swing. The ground doesn't care about your deadline, man. It's gonna do what it's gonna do.