9 hours ago, pilotfish said:

Connect all earth terminals of EVERYTHING that has an earth terminal or requires earthing to your main municipal earth, using an earth wire of at least 1/2 the size of the main conductor, or 4mm for things that you are not sure of (TV antenna, sat dish, PV panels etc). After that do nothing because it is now earthed.

Thanks for the concise answer. Also for the longer one, which explains it so well in humourous fashion.

The old farmer trick was to drive a long pipe into the earth in an area that tends to be wet a lot of the time... but it was never actually measured and done by the book. Makes you think...

I installed once a fancy/expensive piece of kit for surge/lightning protection, the earthing requirements were as follows

6m of 25 by 5 mm copper bar , every meter a 12mm copper rod 1m long

This was trenches about 1m down and the copper bar was drilled to fit the copper rods and pounded in . The rods were fused to the bar in a similar way to TIG welding to keep it all copper.

A bare copper 95mm2 earth cable( no longer than 5m was) was fused or welded to the copper bar , and routed back into the house and provided an earth for this unit.

When all was done it worked well it had a lower resistance than the municipal earth but it was not to be used as an earthing point for anything else. But it was not cheap.

15 hours ago, seant said:

I installed once a fancy/expensive piece of kit for surge/lightning protection, the earthing requirements were as follows

6m of 25 by 5 mm copper bar , every meter a 12mm copper rod 1m long

This was trenches about 1m down and the copper bar was drilled to fit the copper rods and pounded in . The rods were fused to the bar in a similar way to TIG welding to keep it all copper.

A bare copper 95mm2 earth cable( no longer than 5m was) was fused or welded to the copper bar , and routed back into the house and provided an earth for this unit.

When all was done it worked well it had a lower resistance than the municipal earth but it was not to be used as an earthing point for anything else. But it was not cheap.

That would be an acceptable alternative to connecting to your main earth, and if someone proposed this I wouldnt be so vehemently apposed to it - but banging in a 1.2m rod from the local electrical supplier is about as effective as nailing a 2" square piece of silver paper to the wall.