Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff

I'm fishing for ideas - lightening protection

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Gregg:
On a large data center in Silicon Valley I had a lightning rod system engineered by a specialty company.  It consisted of lots of lightning rods and 11 ground rods all around the building; the lightning rod system was grounded separately from the other grounding system that consisted of many ground rods along three sides of the building all connected together by thermite welded bare copper buried cable finally terminated on a large bus bar in the electrical room.  I have enclosed some drawings for reference.  I also installed Polyphaser devices for all of the external security cameras.
An array of lightning rods can also bleed off static charge and prevent some lightning strikes.

For your house you might consider installing multiple ground rods all around, tie them all together externally and bring the ground wire in to an appropriate bus bar that will enable you to connect your other systems that require grounding as well as the house electrical system.  With a ground ring around your house, you will provide a low impedance path for any near lightning strikes to dissipate with minimal impact to your house.

tkamiya:
Thank you for sharing that.  I appreciate it very much.

Thermite/CAD welding scares me, so I'll probably use clamps....   :-X :-X

cdev:
Although there are occasional lightning storms in Northern CA, they seem to be quite rare, at least in San Francisco and the North Coast. There are lots of torrential downpours, but not much lightning, compared to much of the rest of the country.   

tkamiya:
In a month or two, strong thunderstorm with torrential rain will be a daily occurrence.  I almost drove right into a small tornado, too.  New residents quickly learn, if weather looks bad, wait 15 minutes or so and it will clear. 

Once in a wide open part of a college, I was caught in light rain.  I had an umbrella so I opened it.  I started feeling tingly and I got a shock when I touched the metal shaft.  I threw down the umbrella and took cover.  Another time, we were taking cover under a canopy due to rain.  Kabooon!  Direct hit on tall building across the street.  That was LOUD!

HackedFridgeMagnet:
Are you just trying to protect against surges caused by a nearby strike or also against Direct Strike on your building?

If it is just surges coming in on the comms line then as much inductance as your comms line can handle is your friend.
Couple this with MOVs after the inductance as they will work faster than Spark gaps.
For any inline inductance be careful of the magnetic material saturating as your inductance will disappear.
Radio Isolators or optical would obviously also be good here.

If you want direct strike it is much harder and costlier.
From the franklin rods straight to earth in the most direct path, ie straight down.
Low inductance cabling, flat alumnium tape is probably the most cost effective.
You can probably buy thermite welded connections onto rebar if you look. I think you would only want this if you haven't poured the slab.

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