Faraday cage or simulacrum is he way to go. You could use something like 4" reinforcing mesh for both the counterpoise and the walls and roof of the cage. Or whatever is structurally, aesthetically, etc suitable.
You'd want to have that cage connected to "green wire" earth ground for safety - if someone touches it, with bare feet on floor, you don't want a shock.
Isolated things near a tesla coil running can pick up a surprising charge.
I'd not worry about a ground rod.
RF choke on power wires is a good thing. The Corcom filters *might* be ok. You need to look up the data sheet and see what frequencies they are good for. If your coil is running at 100kHz and the filter is a low pass with a cutoff of 1 MHz, that doesn't do much good. Those filters are designed for particular applications - some are good for low frequencies, others are looking for 10s of MHz (e.g. to keep computer noise out of a power line or box)
On Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:33:00 -0700, George Schramm <georgeschramm5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all,
I'm currently building a dual mot asrsg 6" tesla coil, and i'm debating
different grounding scenarios and am looking for advice.
Ideally i'd like to run the coil in my garage, with a, say, 4'x4'
galvanized metal roofing counterpoise, surrounded by a Faraday cage that
also connects to the counterpoise, as well as the strike rail and mot cores
and safety spark gap. The coil would be completely encased.
Another option I was thinking is running a standard copper ground rod
outside, no faraday cage, in this instance I was wondering if I can connect
my mot cores to mains ground, maybe with a rf choke on the mains ground
line to discourage rf from the power supply flowing back in through the
mains ground wiring. Is this acceptable?
The coil will run dual mot with a voltage doubler, 500pf 40kv bypass caps
and 2x 1kohm 225watt resistors forming a low pass rc filter. Along with a
safety spark gap connected to rf ground.
I also have two 30a Corcom emi filters, one at the input of the control
box, and one on the output of the 20a variac.
Power input is limited with a 120v 20a circuit, (us)
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