I'd like to get the group's opinion on lightning protection for my new tower project. My property layout may be a bit different than most situations. I'll try to paint a picture. The tower base is 10
Upon a cursory read, it sounds like you're doing it right - bonding all the different grounding points together with your ground ring around the tower. Let the Motorola R56 standard guide you. It's t
-- ORIGINAL MESSAGE --(may be snipped) REPLY: Why would you want to do that? Do you want a portion of the lightning strike to reach your house ground and be coupled throughout your house? Lightning d
On Fri,9/12/2014 2:26 PM, N3AE wrote: My main concern is that electric feeder to the garage. The feeder enters the house basement on the "north" side and runs to the main service panel along the unfi
Bill, if you don't bond the ground systems together to bring them all to the same potential, the lightning already has a path to the house - the feedline! Then it gets to go through the radio and to
I agree, but there's a better way of looking at this. Lighting is an RF event, not a DC event. Most of the energy in lightning is between 100 kHz and 10 MHz, so the shield of the coax running between
Bill, Everything I've read says you need to bond all grounding electrodes together. I think the electrical code requires this as well. If the tower took a direct strike, all the "earth" near the towe
-- ORIGINAL MESSAGE --(may be snipped) REPLY: When lightning is around, I disconnect all coax and rotator cables and I disconnect them at the base of the tower. I have connectors installed there just
-- ORIGINAL MESSAGE --(may be snipped) REPLY: In my case, I have connectors installed in all coax and rotator cables at the base of the tower and I disconnect them when lightning is around. There is
-- ORIGINAL MESSAGE --(may be snipped) REPLY: I disagree with all of that. See my other posts for an explanation. 73, Bill W6WRT _______________________________________________ ______________________
-- ORIGINAL MESSAGE --(may be snipped) REPLY: I'm not an electrician but I'm pretty sure that is not according to code. You should have four wires, not three, going from the house to the shack: Two h
On Fri,9/12/2014 4:39 PM, Bill Turner wrote: I'm not an electrician but I'm pretty sure that is not according to code. You should have four wires, not three, going from the house to the shack: Two ho
Jim, You only think that there is no ground between your house and shack/garage. That neutral wire is serving both as ground and neutral between the two buildings. What you are doing is no longer per
Jim, Thanks for the feedback. Really appreciated. See my comments below. <There's a point of clarification needed here. Do you have one service, or two? That is, does the from the power company go fi
The whole purpose of the 4 wire system is to keep neutral current off of the ground wire. With a 3 wire system, if the neutral/ground should open there could be 120 volts on cabinets that are connec
I disagree with your analysis, and as I noted, the system I described is specifically listed as acceptable in the last code I bought, about 2003. Neutral and ground are two separate conductors. You a
-- ORIGINAL MESSAGE --(may be snipped) REPLY: Here's the "magic". If someone uses the neutral for ground and the neutral develops an open somewhere down the line, all of a sudden whatever was "ground
Right. With a 3 wire system, if the neutral/ground should open there could be 120 volts on cabinets that are connected to the green wire ground. Neutral and ground are separate conductors. They are b
On Fri,9/12/2014 5:37 PM, N3AE wrote: Ditto here. When I moved in, the service panel was just bonded to the inside cold water copper water pipe. But I'm on a well. The water line going outside is PVC
Maybe where you live the local board had not yet adopted the newer NEC code? Current NEC code does not allow for only 3 wire feeds from one building to another. They require 4 wires. Neutral and gro