Now with my tower being on the opposite side of the house from the AC ground (which would end up being a distance of probably 170 feet) should I worry about tying the tower ground in with the house ground? Would it be worth it?
Only if your tower gets hit by lightning. Since you are in central Florida, the probability of that happening is pretty high.
You need to do some research on grounding systems and how they work. I don't think a forum post can cover all you need to know. Once you do that you will discover there is no way to protect a system from a direct strike if there is a 170 ft wire between the ground for your entrance panel (you do have one don't you), and the AC service ground rod. They need to be very close, maybe 6 ft apart or so. Now you have to figure out how to make that work.
W8JI has some good information on his website, and it would be worthwhile if you studied it to see how it works, but notice that he has a building dedicated to radio and has implemented a grounding system for that building. This is not the same as installing a radio system in an existing house which has the radio ground a long ways away from the AC power service ground rod. He didn't give a solution for that problem. In fact there is no solution for that problem.
As you are reading stuff, don't get confused by the single point ground term (SPG). Probably 95% of the ham radio info on the internet uses this term incorrectly, even when the implementation of the system they are talking about may be correct. The NEC code requires that the grounding for all wiring entering a house be connected at a single point. That point is the AC service ground rod. It's where the grounds for AC power service, cable TV, telephone, waterlines, and whatever else you have, all connect together. That is your house SPG. You can't create another SPG for the same house and still have an SPG concept. That means the ground rod at your entrance panel has to be connected to this SPG with a very short wire for it to be considered part of the SPG. With a long wire connecting these, you have no SPG but have a distributed ground concept and there will be significant lightning current flowing thru your house with a distributed system. You can visualize this better if you draw a diagram of the system of grounds, and look to see where the currents go when either the tower or AC power wiring takes a lightning hit.
Jerry, K4SAV
