Grounding and lightning eleminator

"Lighting eliminator" or "Lightning eliminator": which?

A lighting eliminator can be a simple blackout curtain.

Very few houses can survive a direct lightning strike without incurring some damage. The way to reduce the chances of being hit is to put a lightning conductor up the spire of a nearby church spire or radio mast. Then, they will probably already have them fitted, because they are at increased risk from lightning strikes on account of their height and prominence.

An improved grounding system may be made by driving in additional earth rods until they are in contact with the water table. Connect these rods to the existing spike using heavy cable - certainly heavier than the largest circuit conductor. Part P of the UK's Building Regulations exempts this work from the need for inspection and testing.

There are other ways to achieve improved safety over the earth connection. Consider fitting a 100mA RCCD on the house inlet wiring. With this arrangement, the RCCD will disconnect a fault at a much lower earth loop current than relying on individual circuit overload breakers to do it.

A few ideas:

Use a star configuration

Jump your water meter

Don't bother with plumbing ground. It increases the risk of frying your cock during a lightning storm and who wants that?

join the water ground with your ground rods

jump your gas meter carefully and don't use it as a ground of any sort.

install a mixed variety of surge protectors (gas discharge tube, mov, etc.) at the service entrance and ground all steel electrical boxes

Use thick wires with crimps. Solder could melt with high currents

Putting a metal pole on top of a building is a bad idea. Let the surrounding trees with a lot of moisture do the work!

Try: http://www.polyphaser.com/

There are a lot of things to take into consideration when developing a grounding system.

1. Do you have any overhead wires such as cable TV, telephone, and electrical attached to the house?

2. Is the roof metal?

3. Are the storm gutters metal?

4. Are there overhead trees?

5. Are there antennas on the building?

6. Soil type? Rocky? Sandy? Clay?

7. Have you gotten a direct hit that took out anything plugged into the wall?

8. Have you gotten a "backdoor" hit that took out a telphone, TV, modem, or fax machine?

Don't re-create the wheel ..WE have used a product called Clean Volt. This is silicon carbide construction (no MOV's as they decay w/use) Product is IEEE and CSA certified C62.11 and WILL handle direct lightning strike to you residence. www.mimcv.com

Here are some things I have learned over the years.

You want to bleed off the dis-similar charge from the ground and sky.

This is the reason you see spiked pointed lighting protectors NOT ones

with a ball top. Is is because the spike releases electrons easier as to

stream them off. The ball holds the electrons to a higher potential ie:look

at a Van De Graff generator. The dome holds a hugh charge to its surface

area. Another Example is the ball on top of external car radio antennas.

No it's not for safety. As a vehichel moves through the air it developes

an static electrical charge, a spiked ant. discharges at low enough level

to cause static in the audio. With the ball on top the circuit internal can then

remove the electrial charge with out causing static in audio.

Now back to lighting protection. You want to at least have a point high enough

to create a cone to cover most of the area you want to protect. If thats not

possable then a series of spikes tied togather like down the spine or highest point

of a roof all tied into a good earth ground. Look at old barns or farm houses

for ideas. Also look at electrical substations you will see spikes around the

perimeter and on top of some power poles also.

Now another thing to think about are trees around the house if they are close then

the roof spikes may not be enough to help if they are not high enough.

Example my parents house had a 50ft. c.b. ant. total hight close to 75ft.single

vertical element, w/guy cables in four directions. Pole was grounded at the base.

The cable was shorted when not in use to keep static charge from building.

The closet lighting strike at the house was about 1000ft. a tall oak tree busted it

to pieces and a couple of houses close to it had minor electronics damage.

There house never had a problem for over 2o years they lived there. They lived

on a low ridge on a lake in East Tenneese. Thats not to say they did not have

there share of electrical spikes from the power system. That could have

been protected by using an house surge system.They live on the end of the

power grid for the area. Some of the electonics were protected by surge strips

most of the time stuff was in storms unpluged. The biggest problem was the

light bulbs had to use 130vac units and there life span was short.

So to protect your house: Need to reduce the potential between the sky and ground.

Start by have a good arieal suppresor system. A cone of protection.

A whole house electrical surge system on the ac mains, phones,and cables

with a good low potential ground system all tied to one point. It can be

multi grounding rods but all half to be conected togather. The added benifite

is lower electrical noise in the system.

In one of the other posts the person was talking about jumping the water meter and gas meter this is called bonding.

Grounding and Bonding are different, but they do go togather in the National Electrical Code and need to be understood to correctly to protect People, housing and equipment.

Sorry if I got off track. I have seen alot and repaired some lighting damage equipment.

most of it was in homes that had near hits and EMP spikes on power, cable and phone

lines. The few direct hits had blowed holes in walls melted wiring and destroyed the

equipment.

Now a little fact: The stroke of lighting most often goes from the ground to cloud, but the streamers leading to the strike can and do start cloud to ground.

Hope this has help and maybe enlighten a little.

-Charles