[time-nuts] Thoughts on lightning protection measures....

Chuck Harris cfharris at erols.com
Fri Apr 13 13:14:28 UTC 2012


As the power line worker strapped to the million volt wires he is
working on shows, what is important is that all the grounds in the
house stay at the same potential... not that they stay at some
perfect earth ground potential.

It really doesn't matter if a "house" ground jumps up many
thousands of volts for an instant during a lightning strike, as
long as everything electronic in the house, and everything
structural in the house jumps too.

-Chuck Harris


Attila Kinali wrote:
> Moin,
>
> On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:28:24 -0400 (EDT)
> SAIDJACK at aol.com wrote:
>
>> if I remember correctly, the issue is that the "ground" at the house is
>> not a "real" ground when the earth is frozen, as the resistance of frozen
>> earth goes up substantially over non-frozen earth. So it's like not having
>> grounded the wires at all.
>
> Yes, that's why in Switzerland you have to bury the grounding loop/wires
> at least 1m deep (IIRC), in cold areas even 1.5m deep(again IIRC) to ensure
> that the earth never freezes.
>
> I would have assumed that the building rules in the north have similar
> requirements, just with deeper digging.
>
> Of course, if you live on permafrost, you will never have a decent ground :-)
>
>> This is a real issue for cables brought to the house (cable TV, telephone,
>> etc etc) as those cables are grounded somewhere else on the other side, and
>> thus  there may be 1000's or even 10000's Volts between the two "grounds",
>> even (or  especially) for just a proximity strike. As mentioned by someone
>> else, all bets  are off anyway's for direct hits, not much will survive a
>> direct hit.
>
> Well.. if you have a near hit on some long cable. you're lucky if the
> attached electronics survive. But it shouldn't kill everything in the
> house. My point was that, with "proper" ground connection, your house
> potential should increase to "many 1000s of volt", even with a near hit.
> Again, i might miss there something.
>
>>
>> It's been a long time since I designed cable TV receivers, but the specs
>> are here, and I think there are some explanations in there somewhere:
>>
>> _http://www.nordig.org/specifications.htm_
>> (http://www.nordig.org/specifications.htm)
>
> Thanks, i'll have a look at those.
>
> 			Attila Kinali
>



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