Grounding point for the Tesla Coil

I am going to need some way to ground my Tesla coil. Obviously dumping these high voltages into your household wiring isn't a good idea. I have heard of several other ways, one suggestion was to ground to your cold water pipes (thanks Mike), others include wire mesh lied flat on the floor etc. I wanted a neat and more permanent solution. I am going to install 3 copper grounding rods into my lawn. These four foot rods are available from B+Q, I have already sank one into the centre of the lawn, the other 2 will be close to the lawn edges as far from the central rod as possible. I have some really meaty 5 awg silicon coated wire which will run from the submerged tops of each rod, under the lawn to the wall of my conservatory.

The 3 wires will run under the drainage gravel around the edge of the conservatory and will run up the wall just to the right of the wall basket.

They will pass through the wall and come together in a single pattress box mounted in the conservatory wall.

The box will be sank into the wall just behind Milo to the left of the double plug socket. There is no existing house wiring to the left of the sockets, the mains wiring travels clockwise around the conservatory. I measured up and picked a drilling point on the outside wall which would bring me out central between the plug socket and the corner in the wall.

Drilled through with my super long 8mm masonry bit, slowing down and reducing pressure approaching breakthrough to prevent blasting a hole in the plasterboard.

I threaded a short piece of the 5 awg silicon wire through the hole just to check hole size was OK.

Here's the components for the earthing point, a 26mm deep single pattress box and a 100mm square 3mm thick copper plate. There will be some kind of terminal central in the copper plate, not decided on it's final design yet.

I masked up the plate and marked up the positions for screw holes to mount the plate to the back box. The 3.5mm holes were drilled and countersunk.

You can simply put the pattress box over the hole for the wire, draw round it and the remove the plaster. I used my Dremel with a spiral cutter, it made short work of the plaster, took about 60 seconds to work around the outline of the pattress. The cut out plaster can then be remove with an old flat bladed screwdriver or chisel.

I attached the copper plate to the pattress box and placed it into the cut-out. I am not going to permanently fit the back box yet. I will do it when I address the wiring to the 3 grounding rods.

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Bonding the Secondary coil acrylic end caps with Dichloromethane

Got lots of Tesla related stuff done this weekend. Firstly my little bottle of Dichloromethane turned up from from APCPure, a solvents seller on eBay. This meant I could glue (if that's what you call it) the toroid mount to the top cap of the secondary, and the small blanking plug to the bottom cap. I have never used Di-chlo before so was a little apprehensive. I knew if you get it anywhere else other than the bonding surfaces it marks your lovely clear acrylic. Anyway it went OK, I don't think I used quite enough as I ended up with air gaps but the bonds are absolutely solid.

Here's a shot of the toroid mount bonded in place, you can't really see the offending air gaps and the bond is good and completely seals the central hole used for mounting on the winding jig. Glueing the blanking plug to the base cap went much the same. A slight change of design here, I glued the blanking plug to the bottom of the end cap so it protrudes from the base of the secondary. I will adapt the Tesla base so the plug acts as a central locating pin into the primary mounting disc.

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