Friday, April 28, 2006

Ufer Ground?

Well, the first concrete inspection had only one deviation. We didn't have a Ufer Ground attached to the footing steel. Pat Toma's crew took care of it after consulting with the General Contractor for the job...me.

If you have never used Wikipedia your are missing out on a great resource. It had a complete explanation.

A Ufer ground is something we don't normally see in damper clims, where grounding rod(s) will have good electrical contact and transference capabilities with the surrounding soil due to moisture.

The Ufer ground was developed during WWII in the southwest, when military construction was booming, but the engineers could not get a good safe ground for electrical systems, because of the arid nature of the area. The Ufer ground uses the entire surface area of the footer to establish a grounding surface with the surrounding soil. The extensive surface area is needed to safely pass the possible grounding loads. It does this by grounding through the steel put into the footers of a building and into the surrounding soil.

Look it up on Wikipedia, it will explain it much better. Then try out Wikipedia's random page feature. Its like letting a book fall open to a page and reading, it to see what you get. I now know what a "commonwealth" is after exercising this feature the other night.

No comments: