Home Networking

198 readers

1 users here now

A community to help people learn, install, set up or troubleshoot their home network equipment and solutions.

Rules

Please stay on topic.
Please use the search function to look for keywords related to what you want to ask before posting since most common issues have been answered.
No Ads. This community is for support and discussion. Ads and self promotion are not welcome here.
No product reviews or announcements. If you have a question about a product, be specific about what you want to know.
Be civil. Don't be a jerk. Not being a jerk is surprisingly easy.
No URL shorteners. URL shorteners tend to hide the real use of a link. For this reason, please use normal links, even if they're long.
No affiliate links.
No gatekeeping. With profession shall come professionalism. Extend help without judging others for their ignorance. The same goes for downvoting of comments or posts for "stupid questions" or not being as knowledgeable as others.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Grounding Question (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I recently had a lighting strike and lost about $1000 worth of equipment. I'd like to reduce the chance of that happening again so I'm looking for advice.

I have a UDM in my house, with a 125 foot run underground in conduit to my barn. In the barn, I have a POE switch that feeds 10 cameras and an Ubiquiti AP. I'd like to add a ground somewhere. I just purchased a surge protector with ethernet for the barn, since the switch is currently plugged in directly to an outlet and should be protected anyway. I also bought this from APC for my equipment in the house. I was going to install that between my UDM and POE switch in the house, then ground it to an outlet.

I'm reading so much information about how to go about this. My barn is powered with 220v from my house, so 4 wires go to the barn H/H/N/G. the ground on the barn is the same ground as the house. If I use both devices can that create a ground loop in the event of a surge? I'm also reading that I can use the APC at any point on my network to provide protection. Is this correct?

Please don't suggest fiber runs, as the cable is already run and I don't plan on redoing it. Thank you all in advance.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I think you need a much better understanding of surge protection and lightning protection.

The first thing to look at is the passive protection. If you have a grounded metal structure anything within a 35 degree angle from the highest point is protected. It is slightly better, Google “rolling sphere” model. You need at least 2 ground rods and stranded grounding cables running to the ground rods. Do NOT share with the electrical ground and stay at least 10 feet away. Run fiber, NOT copper between buildings. If you can’t there are special surge arresters using PIN diodes or GDTs but it’s not ideal. Put one at each end.

That takes care of protecting against direct strikes. The rest is dealing with indirect strikes Put surge arresters on ALL attached lines…power or network. Keep in mind you get about 20 V of rise per inch away from the surge arrester so they really offer very little protection more than a few feet away. Standards test equipment against surges at a peak voltage equal to twice the nominal (marked) voltage plus 1,000 V

This also protects against switching surges that are far more common compared to lightning strikes.