lightning attacks:)

larry merlau

Member
Messages
18,741
Location
Delton, Michigan
well, we had a doozy of a lighting storm and took out some phones ,tv and some other appliances at my folks.. most of it came in threw the phone line.. is there a way to prevent that? a fuse link perhaps in the phone line? any ideas would be appreciated.. thanks
 
The box on the side of the house (TV, Phone Line) needs to be grounded into the same system as the house electrical panel.

If you can get into the house with a ground wire from it, just attach to a ground wire in a receptacle. It will go back to the panel and then down the ground rod and back to earth if struck. Not fool proof, but it has worked for me. You may or may not have to have the phone company open the box for you, they even may do this for you, mine did.

If you can't get into the house, you can take it to the ground rod, staying outside.

If you keep all your grounds at the same potential, you are better off.

There is also a device you can mount into your breaker panel that can do the same with elect surges that come into the panel.

If you can't do either of these, 2 more options. 1) Take a bare #4 wire and bury it all the way around the house and form a grounding ring, tie back into the ground rod. 2) take 3 ground rods and form a triangle at 6 to 8 foot, tie together with bare #4 wire and tie back into the grounding rod.

As you can tell, the ground rod is key. Electricity is lazy and wants to get back to the earth the quickest way it can.
 
Steve already mentioned what I was going to suggest. However, A friend had it come through some low voltage outdoor wiring a few years back and hit his main panel (no panel surge protection). His insurance agent told them to go around turning on/off (several times) appliances that were plugged in at the time of the surge. Some had came on and were running, but after shutting off/on a few times they quit or started showing issues.
 
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