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Re: [TowerTalk] Grounding, Lightning & corona discharge

To: Tower Talk List <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Grounding, Lightning & corona discharge
From: "Alan NV8A (ex. AB2OS)" <nv8a@att.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:34:11 -0400
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Similar here, in a 30-yr-old ranch-style house in W Michigan: Elec. at one end, gas and phone at the other, cable and dish at the back. I am working on getting those grounds bonded together.

Alan NV8A


On 07/29/04 10:58 am Jim Brown put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:


Illustrative of the difficulties of doing the single-point ground thing properly with an old house, our telephone and cable TV connections are 180 degrees around the house from the AC power entrance, grounded to a rod at that point

I have a similar problem in my 110 year old Chicago house -- telco on the northeast side of the house, power on the southeast.

Last I looked, code says that all grounds must be bonded together. It is NOT legal (nor is it safe) to have things tied to separate rods (or ground electrodes) without bonding those electrodes together. Ideally those bonds need to be as short as possible and outside the building, but those two requirements can often be conflicting. If I ran the bond outside my building, it would need to be at least 100 ft long and require a lot of trenching. Inside the building ( basement) adjacent to the grounding blocks, it could be as short as about 30 ft. At 1 MHz (the approximate peak of lightning energy per IEEE) there's a big difference in the inductive reactance. What's a mother to do?
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See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.

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