Exothermic welded earth grids and lightning protection — molecular copper-to-copper joints that carry full fault current and do not corrode or loosen over the life of the installation.
A grid is only as good as its nodes. Mesh spacing comes from measured soil resistivity, and every crossing is fused into one piece of copper — the same cross-section as the conductor, so a fault current passes through it as if the joint were not there.
Exothermic welding joins earthing conductors by a controlled reaction in a graphite mould that fuses copper to copper. The result is not a mechanical contact but a single piece of metal — a joint with the same current-carrying capacity as the conductor itself, no interface to corrode, and nothing to re-tighten.
It is the method of choice where the earthing has to be right for decades and is impossible to inspect: buried grids under substations and plant floors, lightning protection down-conductors, tank farms and process areas, and any grid where a high fault current would burn out a bolted or brazed joint the first time it is called on.
A buried grid cannot be re-tightened or re-made. An exothermic weld has no interface to oxidise and no clamp to relax, so its resistance on the day of a fault twenty years from now is the resistance it had at commissioning.
A high fault current will pit and eventually blow a bolted joint and can degrade a brazed one. A welded joint has the same cross-section and conductivity as the conductor, so it carries the same current the conductor carries — repeatedly.
A lightning strike is a very fast, very high current event and it will find the weakest joint in the down-conductor path. Continuous welded copper from air termination to grid is what keeps that energy in the conductor and out of the structure.
Layout set against soil resistivity, fault level and equipment position — conductor size, mesh spacing and electrode count chosen from that, not from a standard drawing.
Grid trenches cut, conductor and electrodes laid to the designed spacing and depth before any weld is made.
Joints made in matched graphite moulds with the correct charge, each weld inspected for full fusion before backfilling.
Continuity and earth resistance measured, test links fitted, and the as-built grid layout with readings handed over.
Send the load, the voltage level and the location. We survey, then quote against a defined scope.
