toad57
09-08-03, 04:46 PM
I am a subscriber to an email newsletter called 'Langalist Plus' (http://www.langa.com/). It costs $11 per year and is the best money I have ever spent on a PC-related periodical. Twice a week (roughly) you get a wealth of info on PCs and related issues.
The 08-Sep-03 issue has a followup to previous postings on surge protection in homes... I cannot post the entirety of the article since the Langalist is a copyrighted distribution, but here is the 'intro' portion of the small article:
Mark Lamendola, who was named an "Outstanding Member" in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for 2002:
Hi, Fred! I have written several dozen articles on surge protection for magazines and Website in the electrical industry. I have a long list of credentials in this area, but won't bore you with them. You hit on some good points in your July 23 issue about this, but it would be good to fill in some important blanks.
Surge protection planning really starts where the power comes into the building. For the typical home owner, this means at the meter. What most folks don't know is their homes are not wired in conformance with the National Electrical Code or in accordance with the IEEE Green Book. Just because the home has passed an inspection doesn't mean it's wired right. I must stress that homes rarely are.
You can see photos of an amazing incidence of protection for a home where I replaced the original illegal grounding system with a Code-compliant one, if you visit http://www.mindconnection.com/library/electrical/groundingcasehistory01.htm
Note: The author is not just 'some dude' but has the credentials- see the above 'mindconnection' link: "(He) designed the lightning protection system now used on all U.S. commercial air traffic control towers."
The article goes on to outline the steps that you need to take to make sure your home is adequately grouned. The article does contain a pointer to a risk assement (http://www.harger.com/riskassessment.htm) quiz (main website of a protection equipment comapny called Harger (http://www.harger.com/lightningprotection.htm)).
I took a 'direct hit' (i.e. I have the burned cable to prove it) by lightning a bolt, or one of its branches, to my rooftop TV antenna last year. All kinds of gear in my house suffered damage, even some that were supposedly 'protected' by surge protectors (oddly, none of my DBS gear got fried). One item that got zapped was my wife as she sat in the basement on a PC... a spark jumped out of the keyboard and into her little finger and exited her (barefoot) heel, leaving a small burn mark.
After reading the websites cited in the article, I am convinced that my 'as installed' home grounding system is inadequate and I will be beefing up my grounding so that it meets the proper codes. My TV rooftop antenna had a direct path to a driven ground rod, but the lightning wasn't satisfied with that ground and instead came on in through my electrical panel and rest of my house looking for a better path to ground- some wiring got fried on my well pump, an Ethernet hub and NIC cards in PCs were zapped, as well as the aforementioned spouse.
Check out this article (subscription required, but worth it for the wealth of stuff you get for $11/year). You can view a sample (http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-09-08.htm) of that edition, but the 'freebie' view doesn't contain any of the surge supressor info I have excerpted above.
The 08-Sep-03 issue has a followup to previous postings on surge protection in homes... I cannot post the entirety of the article since the Langalist is a copyrighted distribution, but here is the 'intro' portion of the small article:
Mark Lamendola, who was named an "Outstanding Member" in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for 2002:
Hi, Fred! I have written several dozen articles on surge protection for magazines and Website in the electrical industry. I have a long list of credentials in this area, but won't bore you with them. You hit on some good points in your July 23 issue about this, but it would be good to fill in some important blanks.
Surge protection planning really starts where the power comes into the building. For the typical home owner, this means at the meter. What most folks don't know is their homes are not wired in conformance with the National Electrical Code or in accordance with the IEEE Green Book. Just because the home has passed an inspection doesn't mean it's wired right. I must stress that homes rarely are.
You can see photos of an amazing incidence of protection for a home where I replaced the original illegal grounding system with a Code-compliant one, if you visit http://www.mindconnection.com/library/electrical/groundingcasehistory01.htm
Note: The author is not just 'some dude' but has the credentials- see the above 'mindconnection' link: "(He) designed the lightning protection system now used on all U.S. commercial air traffic control towers."
The article goes on to outline the steps that you need to take to make sure your home is adequately grouned. The article does contain a pointer to a risk assement (http://www.harger.com/riskassessment.htm) quiz (main website of a protection equipment comapny called Harger (http://www.harger.com/lightningprotection.htm)).
I took a 'direct hit' (i.e. I have the burned cable to prove it) by lightning a bolt, or one of its branches, to my rooftop TV antenna last year. All kinds of gear in my house suffered damage, even some that were supposedly 'protected' by surge protectors (oddly, none of my DBS gear got fried). One item that got zapped was my wife as she sat in the basement on a PC... a spark jumped out of the keyboard and into her little finger and exited her (barefoot) heel, leaving a small burn mark.
After reading the websites cited in the article, I am convinced that my 'as installed' home grounding system is inadequate and I will be beefing up my grounding so that it meets the proper codes. My TV rooftop antenna had a direct path to a driven ground rod, but the lightning wasn't satisfied with that ground and instead came on in through my electrical panel and rest of my house looking for a better path to ground- some wiring got fried on my well pump, an Ethernet hub and NIC cards in PCs were zapped, as well as the aforementioned spouse.
Check out this article (subscription required, but worth it for the wealth of stuff you get for $11/year). You can view a sample (http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-09-08.htm) of that edition, but the 'freebie' view doesn't contain any of the surge supressor info I have excerpted above.