SDS+ Ground Rod Driver 5/8 Inch Diameter

I was very apprehensive about buying this because there were a lot of reviews that said the ground rod mushroomed and they couldn't extract it from the shank. I was also leery about even trying an SDS+ rather than going straight to a Max or possibly even an electric jackhammer.Fortunately, it turned out that I shouldn't have been so worried. I literally spent 20-30x as many minutes reading reviews and second guessing myself as it took to just drive my 8' x 5/8" ground rod fully into the ground with this shank using an SDS+ bulldog. 3 minutes tops. No mushrooming at all, either. Drove it into bad ground that's mostly clay after a a couple rainy days in a row. Just make sure your hammerdrill is set on hammer-only with no drilling. If someone's ground rod is mushrooming, I'd bet it's because they ran into dense rock. If you don't have a good reason to believe that there's granite a few feet down, you won't have any problem.

I don't know why more vendors don't make a version of this tool. It's certainly true that an SDS Max tool is a better choice for all-day use, but the smaller SDS+ hammer has enough power for occasional use, and is much more common in the homeowner/DIY market. I got this for two purposes, neither of them to drive grounding rod. First, I want to drive lengths of rebar through pre-drilled holes in landscaping timbers, in order to pin them together. Second, I need to drive in about a dozen Titan railing post bases, in the course of building a railing system for my boat hoist deck. This tool will do fine for both purposes, and will be much easier on my old-guy shoulders than a hand sledge would be.A comment to the people who talked about the driver getting locked to the copper ground rods which they were attempting to sink. I happened to have a piece of 5/8" ground rod in my shop, and I slipped it into this driver to see how it fits. It fit just fine, so I started thinking about why the rod might get locked in. Here's a theory, in hopes that it might be useful to someone else; I don't know for a fact that this theory is correct, but I did some blacksmithing work 40 years ago, and have had to deal with how to control metal deformation. If you've got any feedback, I'd welcome it in a comment, whether you agree with the theory or not.I'd bet that the problem of ground rod locking is caused by the end of the rod mushrooming from the hammering. To reduce the possibility of that happening, I'd suggest two things: first, make sure that the end you're hammering has been cut square and clean. If the cut has been at an angle, the metal will tend to upset at the thin edge. In addition, if the cut isn't clean, use a mill file to put a small chamfer around the end, just the same way that a similar chamfer is machined on the end of a cold chisel to try to minimize mushrooming. Second, I'd suggest maintaining heavy pressure on the hammer as it's driving. You don't do that to "help the tool;" what you're doing is trying to minimize the size of the gap between the face of the hammer and the end of the rod. You want the power hammer's own anvil to be taking the hit of the motor: it's hardened steel, and will take many more hits before its metal upsets and mushrooms than the soft ground rod will. The more space that you leave between the hammer and end of the rod, the more the accelerated hammer is going to be able to deform the rod's end. When the rod mushrooms, it's going to jam.

Worked like a charm! I used it to drive 2 copper ground rods (each 8 ft long) into the ground for my home renovation project, and when paired with my Bosch Bulldog hammer drill, it made short work of this otherwise unwieldy task of driving the rods in manually (with hammer). Even with my hard clay soil, it took about 4 minutes to drive each rod. One of them hit a rock apparently but after about 15 seconds it broke through and continued on.How well this works will largely depend on your hammer drill. An under-powered one will take longer or not work at all.I'm so glad I found this driver. Saved my arms and back from a lot of stress and strain.

What is there to say about this ground rod driver, it drives rods. No issues, works well, holds up to the pounding, installed 3 thus far. Save yourself the effort and use this with a sds+ driver instead of a sledge.

Could have been a little wider. It works great when trying to drive new ground rods, the driver fits snug against them. However, I would be careful not to use it on a ground rod that has been hammered; if the end has been flared any it may get stuck.

I needed to drive a 5/8's ground rod thru hard soil with plenty of rocks in mid summer. The idea of standing on a ladder with a sledge hammer didn't appeal to me. In order to skirt the difficulties, I dug down nearly two feet to avoid near surface rocks, then poured 10 gallons of water in to soften the soil and waited an hour or so. Hearing that some find the rod stuck in the bit, I sprayed the bit and the rod with lubricant. Using my Bosch Bulldog Extreme, I was able to sink the rod with relative ease down 7 feet, which was fine for my purposes. Highly recommended.

I read the comments about the rods mushrooming in the bit and becoming stuck. There was one comment about holding the SDS drill down tightly on the rod to minimize actual repetitive contact. This was great advice and within 20 minutes in moist soil two rods were in the ground. I copied the practice of another person commented who suggested digging a 16 inch deep hole and then drilling a small diameter hole a short distance. Worked great!! I sure appreciated all the comments that made this job easy.

At first, I didn't know what to expect since I've never driven ground rods before. I watched some You Tube videos and realized that a lot has to do with the soil the rod must be driven into. Fortunately for me, the soil was not rocky and the Bosch Rotary hammer drove each of the 2 rods in about 2 minutes. This tool made the job so much easier than it could have been if I had to use a fence post driver (the method many folks use). Note that most of the Ground Rod Drivers have an SDS Max interface. This one is SDS+. They are not interchangeable. I got this one specifically because I had access to a Bosch that has SDS+.