Gene from 1-Stop Electrical is now in day 2 of the 200A upgrade. He's racing against the rain, which as of 2:00 today hasn't yet started.
I have a slightly unusual grounding arrangment: a second ground rod located located within and down through the wall of my garage. The first ground rod is located outside at the back wall of the garage, but I put a high priority on avoiding the narrow side yard for the second, where it would have caused clearance issues and been a trip hazard.
Yesterday Gene and a helper drilled down 18 inches and couldn't take it any farther. So today he called in the heavy artillery to complete the ground rod hole though my sill plate and slab edge. It took a plumber / coring expert only 10 minutes or so to finish off the hole the final ~6" of depth. We took a chance that we wouldn't hit rebar or that it wouldn't be too far to drill, and it looks like it paid off.
I have a belief that Gene will really earn his money when the inspector comes by and we try to sell off the grounding as sufficient to meet the intent of safety requirements, if not the letter. He indicated that he'd already had a conversation with the City about this and I believe that inspectors have latitude in how they enforce requirements - after all, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to require modern standards across the board for a 54 year old house. The letter of the law says that the cold water will be used as a second ground in addition to one ground rod. We'll ground the water system, but rely on the second ground rod to sell off the safety.
Progress has been rapid since then: new panel in, ground wire attached, weather head installed. Yet remaining: attach to the existing wiring. This will probably wait until after the rain, predicted to last for a week or so.
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