How Would You Ground This?

[fuque]

My house was built in the 1970s. It originally had a TV antenna somewhere on the roof, and the builder installed three small metal conduits that penetrate the roof and lead down into three rooms (the living room and two of the bedrooms). The wall plates in the rooms suggest that 300 ohm twin lead once ran down through these conduits to feed TV sets in each room.

I could easily strap on a DBS chimney mount and use the conduit to run some RG-6 from a dish down into the living room; my question is: what's the proper way to ground the setup? The wall plate is attached to a "mud ring" (i.e. there is no electrical box behind the plate), so even if I ran a messenger wire down the conduit along with the coax there's nothing convenient to which to attach it, nor is there any obvious grounding point up on the roof.

The conduit provides a nice, neat,clean-looking solution for getting the wiring inside the house; it would really suck to have to run a ground wire along the roof and down the wall.

Any suggestions?

 

[TheForce]

"it would really suck to have to run a ground wire along the roof and down the wall. "

But that's what I would do. I would use aluminum wire and bond it with a clamp to a standard 10 ft. ground rod.

 

[boba]

"it would really suck to have to run a ground wire along the roof and down the wall. "

But that's what I would do. I would use aluminum wire and bond it with a clamp to a standard 10 ft. ground rod.

Pretty much the standard method.

 

[Mike500]

Depending on the color of your roof and the siding, I would not use aluminium wire. I'd use #10 or #8 insulated THHN copper wire in the color that best matched my siding and/ot roof and run it to the main entrance panel ground. There, I'd bond it to the main ground wire with a copper split bolt.

 

[fuque]

Ugh!!!

Dang, I was hoping for a better solution.

Thanks, guys, as always I appreciate your help. Looks like I may just stick with the pole-in-the-ground method after all - that way, the ground wire can run inside the trench and enter the house near the service panel (and be bonded to the main ground rod).

Just out of curiosity, how do they do it in new construction? The new-construction house I bought in 1997 came prewired for a satellite dish up on the chimney; there were no ground wires visible from outside the house. Do they run a ground wire inside the house to the service panel ground or something?