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Vonage "Real old house"... you might have the opposite problem of what you think it is..
"Real old house"... you might have the opposite problem of what you think it is.. The key with lightning damage is to determine what happened & why. To put it in simple terms.... lightning & power surges are lazy. It gets into the house/electrical system from somewhere & leaves from somewhere else. While it's virtually impossible to totally eliminate all avenues for lightning to get into your house, giving it a good way out is the desirable thing to do.
If lightning & surges are damaging equipment, it's usually because the equipment provided a better path to ground than the electrical system did, at least from the lightning's prospective. You mentioned that you have an old house, in which case I'd suspect the house's grounding system to be questionable. I'm assuming you mean "southeastern" United States and not England, 'though this would apply, just different voltages & plugs. Does the house have 3-prong outlets? Did it originally have 2-prong (ungrounded)?
As far as checking things out, unless you're aware of electrical wiring, you'll have an idea of what you need to check out... otherwise, I wouldn't recommend playing around with it too much. If the house is older than 50 yrs, you might want to pick up one of these: http://216.245.175.12/AVCAT/images%2Fproducts%2Fdetail%2FCT120_detail.jpg
It'll at least confirm if there's something resembling a ground wire connected to the right place, etc. You can pick one up for ~$5 at most hardware stores.
Another thing you can do is look at the phone network interface box outside. It should have a ground wire running from it to a grounding rod (preferably the same one that the house's electrical system is on). If it's on its own and it's not tied into the house, you can come up with the following scenero (which does happen, btw)... Lightning will strike the ground nearby, but not at your house... that current travels through the ground. Let's say you have two grounding rods, one for phone, one for power and they're 12 feet apart. Copper wire is (almost always) more conductive than soil, so as this lightning current is travelling through the ground, it's going to take the path of least resistance... which would be the copper instead of the soil. So, it zips along the electrical system. In the process, anything that provides a decent connection to ground gets a piece of the action.
When the grounding system's working correctly, these type of surges are "unappealing" to the lightning surge b/c it's a virtual dead-end, and with only one ground point, the copper wiring doesn't hprovide an alternatve path for the lightning, so it continues through the soil and goes on its merry way. BUT, all it takes is a dodgy ground somewhere in the system to change that. Lately I've hit a bunch of bad cable amplifiers which were leaking voltage on the cable line (hitting 60vAC on the CATV line isn't fun) and
This is a VERY simplistic way of looking at it, but I hope it'll give you an idea of what might have happened and where to start looking.
Trowski believe it or not, grounding issues won't totally kill equipment. I have a video switcher on my workbench which was in a TV facility with a nearby lightning strike... blew out the port on which the tower camera was connected to, but the rest of the unit is fine (including the card).
Read The Full Thread: RT31P2 phone port dead after storm.
• Problem:
Ok, I can’t be the only person that lives in the southeast and is having
• Living in the lightning capital of the western hemisphere, I've learned a thing
• we had a storm up here in Ontario yesterday, major lightning show, I had unplugged
• Well I can tell you we are currently getting CLOBBERED here in FL by a storm just
• I just got off the phoen with Tech Support, only had to wait baout 5 mins too.. :)
• Must be that Canuck voice transfer.... :-D Just kidding...
Well if it was
• You may be on to something. Can you explain in more detail? Is there a way to test?
• Nesincg, where are you located?
• JAX
Talkin
College Football
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts
Krystals
and
VonageTPA posted ""Real old house"... you might have the opposite problem of what you think it is.." on 07/15/2005 |
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