NEVER ground to hot water pipes - ALWAYS use the cold water pipe,
as it goes directly to the earth outside the building. The hot water
pipes are routed through the hot water heater(s) and are NOT a direct
path to ground.

==========================

Not entirely correct.

ALWAYS use the cold water pipe.

And if you have a hot water pipe ALWAYS connect that in parallel.

Two connections in parallel ALWAYS have a lower impedance than either of
them.

Hot water, wall-mounted, central heating radiators are convenient connecting
points.

If you have a gas pipe then make it a three-some.

And of course take advantage of the electricity supply ground via the
domestic power wiring.

If there's a 14-gauge wire running from a bedroom shack, through the window,
down the outside wall, to a bunch of buried radials in the back yard then
include it with the others.

The whole system is just a bunch of random length radials and, up to a
break-even point, the more the merrier.

If any one of the principal ground connections can be broken without having
any affect on the tuner settings then you've already gone far enough.

But whatever you have there's no guarantee you will be free of RF in the
shack. RF comes in through the windows, ceiling, walls, doors and floor of
the shack direct from the high-power near-field of the antenna. And you
can't criticise the antenna - it's only doing its job.

If in a bedroom, as a last desperate resort, take up the carpet or lino and
cover the floor-boards with chicken wire. Re-lay the carpet or lino. Connect
the chicken wire from two spaced points to the terminal at the rear of the
PA which is marked "Ground".
----
Reg, G4FGQ

The previous posting, of course, applies to RF grounding of the radio shack,
particularly to end-fed antennas where at some frequencies there may be
appreciable RF currents flowing from the shack down to ground via the very
uncritical arrangements previously described.

If there are any local or national regulations to be complied with regarding
the domestic power frequency safety ground then they should be complied
with. But in general such regulations, by themselves, will fall far short of
an adequate radio ground.

For example, a single safety ground rod, wherever it is located, will likely
have a resistance at all frequencies greater than 50 ohms plus the important
inductive reactance of all the wire between the shack and the rod. By all
means include the rod in the station's RF ground system but it will be found
to be amongst the ground connections which can be disconnected without
having any effect on station operation such as tuner settings.

A single rod is no better than a buried horizontal radial wire of the same
length. If a rod is the only RF ground available an endfed antenna will work
in some poor fashion, RF in the shack, etc., unless the local soil is
saturated with salt water - an unlikely condition.

To protect the family home from direct lightning strikes on the antenna then
the mast etc., is best provided with its own ground electrode system. We
have very few thunder storms in the UK. In all my years I have seen only one
lightning strike which hit the ground. So what I have done when a storm
seemed imminent (the tuner capacitor sparking over) is just disconnect the
antenna at the lead-in to the shack and toss the loose end of the wire as
far as I can along the back yard.

For antenna + mast grounding details I leave to more experienced people.
---
Reg, G4FGQ