RE: Lightning Protection WAS Re: Bloody Lightning!

["Stuart Billinghurst" <stuart@xxxxxxx>]

We has a strike alost direct in Nov last year at work.. It hit a lamp post
outside and came in via the BT lines took out most PC's our alarms and out
telecoms.

The company to speak to is called FURSE, they offer a FREE booklet on
lighting protection an how lighting works.. Surge sockets don't relay give
protection from BIG lighting more power spikes and the such.. The truick is
to give it a better rout to go via E.G. EARTH!

Furse make lighting protection infact for your mains incomming you  can
attach a small box as a spur from your incomming lines that has a route to
earth when ther is a spike, you can then get the same for telco and any
other lines that enter the building, outside lines garden lights sat dish
etc..


I gost some pix of the damage I will dig them out tomorrow and post them,
(even took the plaster off the wall!)

the other effect of lighting is a magnetic Pulse this did most damahe to
CRT monitors..

Total cost if damage > =A3200K

Furse are very helpfull though!
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Doxey [mailto:ukha@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 06 August 2003 19:59
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Lightning Protection WAS Re: [ukha_d] Bloody Lightning!


Lightning is a real pig :-(

You can "TRY" to protect against it but nothing will stop a
direct hit.

About 20 years ago I was working up a pole repairing a dentists line an=
d
I
could tell there was a storm about 5 miles away. Then there was a flash
and
almost instant bang so I got down the pole pretty damn quick. I found
out
later that it had hit a pole about a mile from where I was working.

My mate and I spent the next 4 days on that housing estate going from
house
to house replacing everything. We tried the doorbell at one house and i=
t
didnt work so we knocked on the door. When the door was opened we
realised
why the doorbell didnt work. The phone wire and bell wire ran along the
same
skirting board which was now laying at the opposite side of the hallway
having been blown off the wall.

At another house that had a wall mounted phone, the lightning had gone
into
the phone and earthed itself through the breezeblock to the lightswitch
on
the opposite side of the wall. The switch and metal box left the wall,
flew
across the kitchen and bent the venitian blind.

We also went to one house where the overhead wire looked OK apart from
sagging a bit. Upon closer examination we saw that the side of the
insulation looked as if it had been slit with a razor blade and the wir=
e
pulled out. the copper wire had completely vapourised!

That was obviously a very severe direct hit but with the advent on
modern
electronic communications equipment it doesnt need a direct hit to
damage or
kill equipment. We once had a solicitor querying how we could prove tha=
t
lighting had caused his phone system to die. I pointed out that ...

a. we had 10 times the normal rate of faults
b. the symptoms were typical of a lightning induced fault.
c. that he could have the chips examined in a laboratory to determin th=
e
probable cause of failure

.... or he could go to the shop next door and look at the black mark on
the
wall where their phone system USED to be!!!!

He believed me then :-)


Keith

www.diyha.co.uk
www.kat5.tv