Grounding a Dish

[kevbeck122]

I'm planning on getting DirecTV soon... probably going to end up with the Slimline 3.  I read a manual awhile back for the 18" dish and it said that all you need is a ground rod pounded into the ground for proper grounding.  Does NEC now require that the dish be connected to the main electrical ground?  The location where the dish has to go is nowhere near where the electricity enters the building so I'm wondering if they'll refuse the install.  The only thing it's close to is my air condition condenser.. not sure if there's something around there that it could be grounded to.  Otherwise, can it be grounded to a water pipe?  The cable will be entering the building through my laundry room, so there are pipes in there...

[Stanley Kritzik]

I'm planning on getting DirecTV soon... probably going to end up with the Slimline 3.  I read a manual awhile back for the 18" dish and it said that all you need is a ground rod pounded into the ground for proper grounding.  Does NEC now require that the dish be connected to the main electrical ground?  The location where the dish has to go is nowhere near where the electricity enters the building so I'm wondering if they'll refuse the install.  The only thing it's close to is my air condition condenser.. not sure if there's something around there that it could be grounded to.  Otherwise, can it be grounded to a water pipe?  The cable will be entering the building through my laundry room, so there are pipes in there...

Leaving the code out of it, having a proper grond rod and ground wire next to the dish is really good practice.  It just makes more sense than running a long wire into the house and grounding it there.  I know there are some arcane subjects, such as ground loops as well as the code, but I used the ground rod 100' from the house.  I also grounded my coax cables there, too, using dielectric grease for the exposed coax connectors to keep moisture out.  So far, two years and no trouble.

Stan

[kevbeck122]

That's what I was planning on doing.  I guess code says even if you have a ground rod connected to the dish, it still has to be connected to the main electrical ground blah blah blah.  Hopefully I can get an installer who is willing to bend the rules a little bit.  I'd install myself, but I don't want to pay for the equipment.

[ArgMeMatey]

Yes, what you propose will work.  

But as you may know the reason you want all your grounds bonded together is so that if conditions become right, electrons do not get confused about which ground is the one to seek.  

If your other grounds get to be bad, or higher impedance, you'll have a whole bunch of electrons saying "I gotta find ground somewhere!"  Then a fault current may develop that could fry your dish stuff or injure someone who came in series with the source and the ground.  Like most problems, the chance of this happening is remote, but it does happen.  

At some point in the past, it started to happen often enough that the codemaking panel, which includes academics, business people, and regulators, decided it was worth the additional cost to require everything grounded to a common point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stray_voltage