Grounding confusion / recommendations.

[ejbrennan99]

Background:

My house is not super big, but is long.

I want to add 2-3 roof antennas total - 2 for scanners, 1 for ham radio - they all need to be grounded.From where the antennas will be installed it will be roughly a 25' drop to ground level and a new 8' copper ground rod I am going to install. That new ground rod needs to be bonded to the main ground.
My electrical service is at the far other end of the basement, and has a copper ground rod that was installed before the concrete floor was installed, and sticks out ~6 inches. The service line comes in and grounds to that rod directly below.
The 200A panel, directly above the ground rod, also has a separate ground wire coming out and it attaches to a cold water pipe right above it.

For the newly installed antenna ground rod, I have (at least) 3 options:

#1 From the new rod, bury ~100' of #6 wire and run it outside the house to the other end, and then as close as possible to where it must re-enter the basement, and then maybe another 20-25' to the 'main' ground rod.

#2 Enter the basement directly next to the new ground rod, run ~85' of #6 wire attached to the rafters of the unfinished basement, and attach to the main ground rod.

#3 From the new ground rod, run ~5' of #6 wire, to the copper pipes that are just inside where it comes in - this is clearly the easiest, but not sure if it is NEC approved.
I'd love to save the money on almost 100' of #6 wire, and love not to dig a 100' trench by hand, but more importantly I want it safe and legal.

Suggestions / thoughts?


EDIT: ChatGPT says that #2 is the best option, GrokAI says #3 is the best option.....but would much prefer to hear from real people.

 

[prcguy]

According to NEC, for an 85ft run you would have to upsize the wire from #6 but I don't know what size that would be. Looking at it from how professional satellite, TV antenna installers are supposed to be trained, they look over your roof and house not only for a clear path to the satellite or TV transmitter, they also look for your AC entry panel and grounding. They try to stay within about a 35ft maximum run for the 10ga ground wire they will be using. If the ground wire run is too long and there are no other legal points to ground like a metallic conduit on the roof running direct to the AC entry panel then its a phone call back to their supervisor and you may not qualify for the installation your signed up for.

So rather than running a fortune in large conductor copper ground wire, is it possible to locate the antennas closer to the AC entry panel and use a little more low loss coax?