On April 11, 2004 05:37 pm, Carroll Grigsby wrote: <snip!> > Thunderstorms are quite common here. (Matter of fact, the weather guys say > that they are likely tonight, tomorrow and possibly Tuesday.) In the 37 > years that I've lived here, the only lightning damage that we've ever > suffered came in on the telephone drop. It took out my shiny brand new 2400 > baud external modem, an answering machine and two telephones; the guy > across the street ended up with a shattered pine tree (60 ft?) in his yard. > Evidently the stroke hit the tree, jumped to the telco drop to his house > (it passed through the tree's limbs), and decided that all that copper was > another neat way to get to ground. I called BellSouth to ask them to check > out the protection block; their response was pretty much, "Stuff happens. > Deal with it." SOP around here is that whenever there's lightning in the > area, the PCs are shutdown, the power cords and modem lines are > disconnected from the wall, and we only use cordless phones. > > Since then, I've talked to many others who have also had lightning damage > via the phone lines. A few have had also had hits on the power lines. > Curiously, no one has ever mentioned a lightning problem with cable TV. > > -- cmg Hi,
Anything that is run on a pole can be struck by lightning. In fact lightening seems to love power/phone poles. What often happens with power, though not always, is that a lightening strike will cause the breaker on the pole or on the transformer to pop, usually after frying the transformer which is supposed to send everything to ground. Sadly a side effect of this is a sudden burst of power down the line and into the house. This MAY cause the main breaker to go, but even then the surge can get into the house wiring. Years ago this used to do things like explode TV tubes. Even now it can take out a PC in no time flat. As for telephone..well the same dynamic is at work. Though we do bond the ground to the main earth ground of the house as close as we can get to it. In the olden days we'd bond to the metal plumbing in the house which was also grounded and provided a lovely path to ground. Nothing is ever perfect, but an improper installation can cause significant damage that a good install won't do. I don't know about Bell South but at Telus we'll still roll to check out the protection after a lightening storm if the customer reports noise on the line and we isolate it to the house or that the lines went dead and we know it wasn't our switching equipement or the cable. A blown protector will cut the lines or cause a ton of noise. ttfn John
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