There are lightning arrestors, whole house surge protectors and point of use surge protection.
I use the whole house and point of use solution together, successfully, at least so far it has been successful.
If the home was hit then there is nothing that I am aware of that is not sacrificial.
I have never seen or heard about a gas conductive medium for residential protection. Distribution sure but not residential.
Are there lightning arrestors out there? Recently my daughter's house was zapped and she lost much electronic and appliance equipment. I want both a whole house type and one for the protection of electronic equipment. I recall seeing some which use a gas as the conduction medium. Is my recollection correct?
Peter.
With a direct hit, you are not going to have protection. Lighting rods might be a good investment.
Whole house surge protectors and point of use on the most sensitive and expensive stuff is what I do. The last hit was three feet from my A/C compressor. It knocked out a controller board and that was it.
almost all new phone line protectors installed by the phone company are "gas" protectors that fire at 350 volts. They are in your "network interface" and may be either moulded into a two terminal block, or a 2 or 4 terminal block that has 2/4 screw-in replaceable protectors, both versions with a metal bottom plate that is connected to a ground wire (rod). The older scrwew-ins used "carbon blocks" and can be retroed with gas inserts. If you look at the end of the removed insert you can easily tell the type, white ceramic with black core -carbon, or tinted ceramic with metal center terminal -gas. careful, the carbon insert is made up of pieces ;-) cap, spring, air gapper, strike disc, and carbon.
-larry / dallas
Lightning arrestors are a good idea. But before you install them I suggest that you take a look at the grounding electrode system for your daughter's house. Check the following:
Is the main grounding electrode conductor from the electrical panel connected to the water service before the water meter? Is it a good, clean, and tight connection? Is there a bonding jumper from one side of the water meter to the other side of the water meter? Does she have supplemental ground rods connected to the electrical service? Is the cable TV wire bonded to the grounding electrode conductor? Are the hot and cold water pipes and the gas pipe bonded together? Is there a main bonding jumper installed in her main electrical panel?
If the answer is no to any of these questions, I suggest that you get that corrected before installing lightning arrestors. The ground rods for the lightning arrestors will need to be bonded to the grounding electrode system also.
For more info you can read article 250 in the National Electrical Code and NFPA 780 Standard for the Installation of Lightning Protection Systems.
A good grounding electrode system will help prevent damage from lightning.
John Grabowski
AMEN!!!
I retired three years ago as head of a Raytheon Electromagnetics Lab near Dallas. I would like to make a couple of points here:
1) Nothing protects well against a direct strike. 2) Anything is better than nothing. 3) You DO NOT get what you pay for. You pay for packaging, nice colors, fancy brochures, websites , and advertising. Most "surge protectors' are nearly the same inside. See #2 above. 4) A good ground is better than no ground. But there are many modes of failure where a ground has nothing to do with it....So, my best advice:
Unplug everything and disconnect it physically from the telephone line and power lines when there is any chance of a storm. All of the
surge protectors are based on the fact that people want to leave alll their stuff plugged in, and they try to save them from themselves.....
Me -- ??? --- I do INTERNET on a laptop which is completely removed from everything when I am not using it. Never had a problem, tho I know that a near strike can still EMP the system --- very unlikely, tho.
So, just how much risk do you want to take....?
If you don't know exactly how surge protectors work and have the academic background to full understand the subject, then you are just repeating advertising hype,........... in my opinion.
Andy (retired PE, MS, BS, GMDSS, GROL etc etc )
Amen Amen!
I got hit, and lost my cable modem and router. I thought that was rather odd equipment to loose. After a bit of investigation I found out the cable line was NOT grounded where it entered my house. it all made sense.
Perhaps if you see what was fried you can invesitgate if you have a grounding issue first. Note, surge protectors are only as good as the grounds they connect to anyway. Im not familiar with 'arrestors'
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