Lighting Rod Braided Copper Wire

For those of us that live rural, any of those old houses and barns with a lightning rod protruding from the roof will have a large braided copper cable running to a grounding rod sometimes several.

I cut the cable at the grounding post then hook up the copper cable to my truck pulling everything from the roof top. Saves climbing, besides most of these old roofs are unsafe.

To make contact with landowners I have purchased land owner maps for the various Rural Municipalities for the grounds I search.

I'm thinking about purchasing the digital version that will interact with a gps unit, make life a lot simpler. The paper maps are fairly large and cumbersome to handle and you never have the right map with you when needed.

The Manitoba outback is a scrappers wet dream.

What are the old ground rods made of?? Might be able to put a comealong off your truck or some other lifting device to pull them up. I believe today they are copper coated steel but perhaps old ones might be copper. Mike.

actually ther was a compny back in the late 1800 that made lightning rods out of platnium, and sold over 1000 of them. then most were made of solid copper, now they look like copper but most are copper coated iron.

I am not far from the sticks in any direction from me here in Dallas Tx and as a Tower Climber for a while I saw most of north Tx and some of Waco. Its amazing the amount of scrap out there in the country...and its mostly forgotten,abandoned, owners just don't care. I plan on using google earth to find my stuff though. Otherwise its 1/4 tank to get their, look and haul. Towers here must have a 10ft ground rod a long with copper wiring that goes up the length of the tower for lightning protection (though mostly for show in reality).

I am taking down a 75 foot Rhone tower with steel guy wire cables that run the length of it on 4 sides at 2 different sections of the tower. I think Friday will be a nice pay day!