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[Exede] grounding question

Hi Everyone, Newbie with a question.
I had Excede installed on the roof of my home and the installer drove a 8 ft grounding rod to ground the system. It is on the other side of my home from the Homes Electrical grounding rod. The cable comes from the dish into a ground block and then a ground wire goes to the rod in the ground. Does this grounding rod need to be connected to my Homes Main grounding rod? If so, how should I do this or should I call Excede and have them come out to do this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Yes the new ground does need to be tied into the existing house ground. You should contact whoever installed your Exede system to have them fix this.

Let me make sure we understand each other..... The dish is grounded through a Ground block and then to a Brand new 8 foot grounding Rod. This New Grounding Rod does not have a wire coming from it going to my Homes Main Grounding Rod at my Electrical Meter. I have called the Dealer back and was told that the New Grounding Rod does NOT need to be tied into the Homes Main Grounding Rod. What do I do now????

IMHO the installation shouldn't have been done with a second ground rod unless the customer has an electrician come out and bond the grounds together first. As an Exede retailer there's no way we'd take on that task and bear the expense for bonding the grounds together. Have you seen the price of heavy gauge copper lately? That is definitely not part of the free standard install.

There is similar thread here: »Grounding issues with new install

My Exede-12 system and my neighbor's system was installed just like yours with the Exede grounding rod not connected to our homes' grounding rod or any type of electrical ground.

I have been wanting to follow up with questions, but I've been hesitant so as not to hijack that OP's thread (although my questions are quite germane to both of these topics).

The NEC requires that the grounds be bonded together.

See this helpful document:
»www.reeve.com/Documents/Articles···eeve.pdf

The two sections of the NEC that are of interest are 250 and 810. The document has a link to an online version of the NEC where you can read and follow along as he explains the requirements.

Grounding is a very, very important consideration when doing the site survey. If it can't be grounded to the house ground then it doesn't go in. That's what ViaSat says and that's what we do.

That said, we were installing Dish Network at a house where the Mastec installer had mounted an Exede dish to the vinyl siding of the house with no support arms for the mast. The wire went straight from the TRIA through a window into the modem. What a mess! And unfortunately we've seen a lot of Exede installations missing a ground or somehow not right in the last several months.

Well it was a Mastec job.....

Whole reason I got out of the IC install job. I was given too many DirecTV jobs in my area that had no LOS where I could NEC ground. And I wasn't going to risk it like 95% of the other contractors in my shop would.

I cant wait to hear back from the installer. He seems to be concerned and sincere in finding out if he has to bond the 2 ground rods.

I dont care what it will cost the installer for the wire to bond the 2 rods. If its not up to spec, he shouldnt have done it the way he did. This is a Re-install because another installer had come out and botched an install......
I dont want to pay for problems later that might be caused from this problem.....
180.00 for a new modem or a new tria is 150.00, plus you have to pay the service charge of 95.00. 65.00 a month for 10 GBs is already robbing me !!! lol

Since it's more important that it be grounded than not grounded at all I wouldn't worry about it. As long as the cable goes to a ground block before entering the house that should be good. Here in AZ they don't even bother grounding it at all a lot of the time.

Two grounds that aren't bonded together are much, much worse than no ground at all.

He didnt charge me to put the new ground rod in.
My water pipes are all pvc so it cant be grounded that way.

If I should have to do this myself.....
I know I will need the wire and 2 connectors. Should it be #10 or #6 solid copper?
Can I run under the house and attach to joists? This would be about 40 foot run of wire.
Or would I need to go along the brick foundation on the outside of house? This would be about 60 foot. I can get a 50 ft roll of #10 solid copper wire with a green coating on it for about 25.00.

JSheridan, That's not true! The ground protects you from lightning coming into the house and causing damage. You shouldn't be making comments like that when you don't know what you are talking about! I certainly hope nobody believes your nonsense!

Going thru the crawl space is the smart thing to do. #10 is adequate, as long as its solid copper and not stranded. Did either installer bond the TRIA to bare metal behind the dish? Cuz that's an important piece of the grounding puzzle as well

//greg//
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Former DirecPC/Direcway/HughesNet customer and forum participant since 2001

I would have a look at Annex C of the NFPA 780, Lightning Protection Systems.

NFPA 780 can be viewed free online here and provides a lot of interesting information about lightning: »www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards···code=780

Annex C is Explanation of Bonding Principles and does a good job of explaining why bonding of the supplementary grounding electrode into the building ground is required.

And as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) manages the NEC and NFPA 780, let's all try to keep the flaming to a minimum here

No thanks for the 40 some dollars to read it there.

I've read it in classes, tested on it, etc. I've been doing this for 28+ years and from what I have seen with my eyes and felt in the way of shocks coming from F connectors during that time I guarantee you that having 2 grounds is worse than having no ground at all.

If your dish is on the top of your house like a lightning rod then lightning is a big consideration. Otherwise it's a small consideration. Static bleed off and signal stabilization is the primary use of a ground on a day to day basis.

My point in all this is that two grounds are bad. Period. You and others can take that and learn from it or not, personally I couldn't care less.

What I apparently failed to get across is that we always ground every satellite internet installation THAT WE DO properly, in fact we've walked away from more than one job that couldn't be grounded properly. My point was that on service calls for installations that WE DID NOT DO I've been shocked more than once from a system with two grounds but never from a system that wasn't grounded.

There it is. Can we all agree on that?

I believe I have read somewhere that ViaSat no longer requires the Tria to be grounded to the dish by a seperate wire. I am not an Installer and dont know this to be a fact so dont take my word for it.....lol

I am still waiting on the Installer to get back with me on the grounds needing to be bonded to each other.

That is conditionally true in the case where the entire assembly is metal; that is, a TRIA bolted directly to a metal feed arm which is bolted direcely to a metal dish that's bolted to a metal antenna bracket which is attached to a grounded mount. But because paint is an insulator, it must be removed at contact points to complete the ground path. That often leads to rust.

Bonding TRIA to bracket with a single length of (minimum) 14AWG copper wire is a much simpler and more practical solution. And if there's even a hint of plastic in the path, the bond wire becomes essentially mandatory.

//greg//
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Former DirecPC/Direcway/HughesNet customer and forum participant since 2001