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Well, I thought I had the lightning thing figured out a couple of weeks ago when my water well quit. When I pulled it, it turned out the water was getting in to the electrical unit and electrifying my water pipes. I replaced that and no problems untill thursday night, lightning hit the house again and blew out our phone and computer cables(cumputer itself was fine thank goodness.) It hit directly where the phone company's box is attached to the house and blew it in pieces all over the yard. The farthest piece was about 50ft from the house. I just got done today rewiring everything. The phone line in the attic was actually melted in places to a 40year old pipe that carries propane to my heater. My dads arm was filled with shrapnel from the molten copper exploding thoughout the living room. There is a black line on my outer wall from the phone line.
I am getting tired of this as I have to replace this stuff every year. Every time the phone company comes out to replace the box, they put a new ground rod but it isn't helping. I have a large lightning rod not that far from the house (a 35ft flag pole) and its not helping. They say that there is a better chance of getting hit by lightning than winning the lottery so where is my millions as this house has been hit 12 times, every year since I have lived here.
Salt and water your ground. Living in the desert as you do the soil is devoid of electrolytes. If you do an Ohm check on the ground rod compared to the wiring in your house you will see that your ground rod has a resistance in the 2-300 Ohm range as opposed to next to nothing on the house. It seems like a pain but believe me it works. I am a communications tech in the Marines. When we set up our HF radios and equipment in the desert we have to do the same thing. Dig a hole around the rod ( helps to have a rod 6 feet or longer pounded down to almost ground level) 2 feet deep and 3 feet across fill with rock salt and water it every time you get a chance in a week or 2 the resistance on your ground will be down to double digits. That should go a long way to taking care of the lightning.
Jeremy
GySgt USMC Ret
To err is human, To forgive is devine, Neither of which is Marine Corps policy Semper Fidelis
I think J. Reed has hit the nail on the head. Back in the day I was a RTO in the Army and in extreme sandy dry soil we would put up our antenna with a spider ground wire system. Radiate 6 or 8 copper wires from a ground rod out to around 6 feet, cover with the sand to keep from tripping over it. Made an excellent ground plane and aided in better radio reception and transmissions. Of course this was in the old tube type radios we used back then. Might also help to put up aireal terminals (lightning rods properly grounded on the house and surrounding buildings. Good Luck.
JReed wrote:Salt and water your ground. Living in the desert as you do the soil is devoid of electrolytes. If you do an Ohm check on the ground rod compared to the wiring in your house you will see that your ground rod has a resistance in the 2-300 Ohm range as opposed to next to nothing on the house. It seems like a pain but believe me it works. I am a communications tech in the Marines. When we set up our HF radios and equipment in the desert we have to do the same thing. Dig a hole around the rod ( helps to have a rod 6 feet or longer pounded down to almost ground level) 2 feet deep and 3 feet across fill with rock salt and water it every time you get a chance in a week or 2 the resistance on your ground will be down to double digits. That should go a long way to taking care of the lightning.
I'll try that. My soil isn't really sandy but it is very dry especially where the ground rod is, north side of house. One thing that makes it a little interesting is that my property sits on a rock shelf and I wonder if that may have something to do with it. Its caliche and is anywhere from 1ft below the surface to 8ft depending on where I dig.
Good advice Jeremy! Have seen where that has made a major difference.
Some interesting advice also:
Lightning Rods
In Franklin's day, lightning rods conducted current away from buildings to earth. Lightning rods, now known as air terminals, are believed to send Streamers upward at varying distances and times according to shape, height and other factors. Different designs of air terminals may be employed according to different protection requirements. For example, the utility industry prefers overhead shielding wires for electrical substations. In some cases, no use whatsoever of air terminals is appropriate (example: munitions bunkers). Air terminals do not provide for safety to modern electronics within structures.
Air terminal design may alter Streamer behavior. In equivalent e-fields, a blunt pointed rod is seen to behave differently than a sharp pointed rod. Faraday Cage and overhead shield designs produce yet other effects. Air terminal design and performance is a controversial and unresolved issue. Commercial claims of the "elimination" of lightning deserve a skeptical reception. Further research and testing is on-going in order to understand more fully the behavior of various air terminals.
Bonding assures that all metal masses are at the same electrical potential. All metallic conductors entering structures (AC power, gas and water pipes, signal lines, HVAC ducting, conduits, railroad tracks, overhead bridge cranes, etc.) should be integrated electrically to the earth electrode subsystem. Connector bonding should be thermal, not mechanical. Mechanical bonds are subject to corrosion and physical damage. Frequent inspection and ohmic resistance measuring of compression and mechanical connectors is recommended.
Grounding
The grounding system must address low earth impedance as well as low resistance. A spectral study of lightning's typical impulse reveals both a high and a low frequency content. The high frequency is associated with an extremely fast rising "front" on the order of 10 microseconds to peak current. The lower frequency component resides in the long, high energy "tail" or follow-on current in the impulse. The grounding system appears to the lightning impulse as a transmission line where wave propagation theory applies.
A single point grounding system is achieved when all equipment within the structure(s) are connected to a master bus bar which in turn is bonded to the external grounding system at one point only. Earth loops and differential rise times must be avoided. The grounding system should be designed to reduce ac impedance and dc resistance. The shape and dimension of the earth termination system is more important a specific value of the earth electrode. The use of counterpoise or "crow's foot" radial techniques can lower impedance as they allow lightning energy to diverge as each buried conductor shares voltage gradients. Ground rings around structures are useful. They should be connected to the facility ground. Exothermic (welded) connectors are recommended in all circumstances.
Cathodic reactance should be considered during the site analysis phase. Man-made earth additives and backfills are useful in difficult soils circumstances: they should be considered on a case-by-case basis where lowering grounding impedances are difficult an/or expensive by traditional means. Regular physical inspections and testing should be a part of an established preventive maintenance program.
Transients and Surges
Ordinary fuses and circuit breakers are not capable of dealing with lightning-induced transients. Lightning protection equipment may shunt current, block energy from traveling down the wire, filter certain frequencies, clamp voltage levels, or perform a combination of these tasks. Voltage clamping devices capable of handling extremely high amperages of the surge, as well as reducing the extremely fast rising edge (dv/dt and di/dt) of the transient are recommended. Adopting a fortress defense against surges is prudent: protect the main panel (AC power) entry; protect all relevant secondary distribution panels; protect all valuable plug-in devices such as process control instrumentation, computers, printers, fire alarms, data recording & SCADA equipment, etc. Further, protect incoming and outgoing data and signal lines. Protect electric devices which serve the primary asset such as well heads, remote security alarms, CCTV cameras, high mast lighting, etc. HVAC vents which penetrate one structure from another should not be ignored as possible troublesome electrical pathways.
Morgan
The ground technique I described will work for you. Southern Californian desert are dominated by caliche sub soil as most arid areas are. So this should work great for you the trick is to get your ground as deep as possible. I usually only go 6' down simply because swinging a sledge hammer or slide hammer gets old in a hurry. You should be able to find proper copper ground rods at Home Depot or any contractors supply. They are 3' in length and threaded on both ends so that you can put them together with threaded couplings. pound them down to with in 6" of ground level then dig out around it as I described before. You need to get your ground down to 15 Ohms or less to be effective so it will take some time lots of salt and water to get there. But once it is good it is easy to maintain.
Jeremy
GySgt USMC Ret
To err is human, To forgive is devine, Neither of which is Marine Corps policy Semper Fidelis
jeremey is right...any electical charge in the area likes your internal phone grounds better than the service ground .
Have the power company come out and check the ground rod at your transformer... it theory that should take most stray voltage to the earth before it ever gets to the grounded equipment in the buildings. Most electric companies require that the ground rods on their systems megger out to 10-25 ohms.
We used to salt rods ... dig around the rod about 3 feet and slip a collar or 4 or 6 inch pvc around it... then fill the void up with calcium chloride or rock salt... just make sure the salt pile is below the connection.
You may have more than one panel for the house and whatever outbuilding you have nearby,,, the NEC says that we can only have the neutral bonded at one point in the system... mulitple ground points can cause problems.
always press the "red" button--- it's worth the effort and the results can be fun
Hillbilly wrote:
then fill the void up with calcium chloride or rock salt... just make sure the salt pile is below the connection.
I have quite a bit of calcium chloride that we use to weigh down tractor tires. I'll try that too.
I wish I had some pics to describe the set up better. If it wasn't raining I would go out and set up a demo for ya so could see what we are talking about.
Jeremy
GySgt USMC Ret
To err is human, To forgive is devine, Neither of which is Marine Corps policy Semper Fidelis
Jeremy... we used to use a section of drain tile... just drive the ground rod in the center of the vertical section of pipe.
I had a power company customer who "improved" his ground to the point he became our system ground for the primary...
he would pull every transient and switching surge we had on our system right to his house grounds.
The guy was a serious Ham radio man .. and got really carried away.
Last trouble call we had... I just cut him loose from my grounds and we never went back.
always press the "red" button--- it's worth the effort and the results can be fun
I don't know that I can add much, but growing up in eastern Kansas, we had four lightning rods up on the house as well as one on the utility pole feeding it. Each barn and sizable shed had one on each end. I used to think they were a lot of work to maintain, but it was easier than rewiring the light switches and replacing appliances, and you could set the schedule, not Mother Nature.
Hillbilly wrote:Jeremy... we used to use a section of drain tile... just drive the ground rod in the center of the vertical section of pipe.
I had a power company customer who "improved" his ground to the point he became our system ground for the primary...
he would pull every transient and switching surge we had on our system right to his house grounds.
The guy was a serious Ham radio man .. and got really carried away.
Last trouble call we had... I just cut him loose from my grounds and we never went back.
I hear ya. I work on radio equipment for the Marines HF, VHF, UHF. HF radio needs a very good ground to work properly so I have set up some crazy grounds in my day. I also was a Ham so been doing it a while. I set up a daisy chain ground set up once in Yuma there were so many rocks that i was only able to get in one rod deep (3') so i had 7 rods pounded in connected together with 1/2" copper ground wire we got a 4 Ohm reading on that one. It allowed us to talk to a unit in Okinawa, Japan.
Jeremy
GySgt USMC Ret
To err is human, To forgive is devine, Neither of which is Marine Corps policy Semper Fidelis
