Use conduit to ground an antenna

groundingtv-antenna

I have an HD antenna mounted to a storage shed, not even as high as the house roof. It's close to where the electrical service enters the house. There's no ground rod in sight. (House built in 1971.) However, electrical is underground, and there's a metal conduit from the meter into the ground.

I'm guessing (!) that the conduit is grounded. My thinking is that, since it goes underground and constitutes a ground itself, it must (by code) be connected to the main ground.

I could pay an electrician a few hundred dollars (or, in my experience, much more) to provide a ground to the antenna, or I could just ground it to the conduit, which has a very handy clamp where it's attached to the brick wall.

Probably 90% of home antenna installations aren't grounded at all, but I thought I'd make an attempt to do it right.

Above grounding would also apply to the ground block which will be attached to the outside wall, near where the coax enters the house.

Best Answer

If the conduit is metal, and penetrates the ground it is, by definition, grounded.

But you can also just go buy a grounding rod at Home Depot as well if you'd prefer to do it that way. It's just a copper rod you pound into the ground and attach a copper ground wire too.

You can also ground it inside via the coax. This is how most satellite dishes are grounded. Inside the house there's a groundable coax coupler. Coax goes in one end and out the other, and then the coupler, itself, is connected to a ground inside the house (typically conduit, plumbing or a ground in a junction box).

All that said, would this be the highest metallic element on your house? If not, I don't know that grounding is really necessary. EDIT: it looks like, upon further digging, all antennas are required to be grounded per code.