Horizontal Burial of Grounding Rods

[George Snyder]

I am working on my brother's home installing a grounding system to replace the failed one originally placed on the house several decades ago. My plan was to drive two vertical parallel grounding rods outside the home. Unfortunately, the soil is very rocky and I doubt it will be possible to drive the electrodes without destroying them. So my possible solution now is to install two eight foot long grounding rods in a trench 30 inches deep. The question is do I need two trenches in parallel six feet or more apart side by side or may I dig a 30 inch deep trench 22 feet or more in length and lay the rods end to end with a 6 foot gap between them.? The NEC appears not to be specific in that regard.

A second question also comes to mind about whether I have to surface one end of each rod so the ground rod connections maybe inspected or may I bury them completely. Visibility ports (3 or four feet of 4 inch plastic pipe) could be installed if needed or I could leave the ends exposed until inspected and then bury them completely? Comments would be appreciated.

 

[ActionDave]

If installing stuff is not your occupation, then we can’t help you install stuff. The reason is that the forum’s owner does not want a person to get an answer to the question they asked, but not get answers to the dozens of other questions they should have asked and were unaware they needed to ask.