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Author Topic: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged  (Read 5922 times)

sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #30 on: February 12, 2020, 11:59:53 PM »

The saying goes that lightning never strikes the same place twice.

But I don’t buy that.   The chances of a strike in close enough proximity are so remote that, if it happens, I feel that it's worth asking whether there was a reason....  geographical, climatic, elevation, whatever. And whatever the reason, it may still exist next time there’s a storm... :'(
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Chrysalis

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #31 on: February 13, 2020, 01:16:25 AM »

You get a lot of lightning storms in your area Weaver?
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #32 on: February 13, 2020, 01:36:09 AM »

The saying goes that lightning never strikes the same place twice.

But I don’t buy that.   The chances of a strike in close enough proximity are so remote that, if it happens, I feel that it's worth asking whether there was a reason....  geographical, climatic, elevation, whatever. And whatever the reason, it may still exist next time there’s a storm... :'(

Its nowhere near as predictable as people think, there are literally buildings much taller than my house across the road but it his half way down our chimney, not even the top.

Exactly what environmental factor caused it to take such a strange path to ground is anyones guess.  But its not unusual, you see photos where it hit half way down a tree, it hitting the highest point is not remotely a given.
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #33 on: February 13, 2020, 07:33:47 AM »

We get lightning storms a few times a year.
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #34 on: February 13, 2020, 08:29:42 AM »

We get lightning storms a few times a year.

Judging by the number of times you mention it on the forum, my gut feeling is that you seem to get storms maybe two or three times as often as I do.    But there’s other factors too, that I’d assume would affect the probability of damage from distant strikes in the same general area.  For example my phone line is underground all the way from the cabinet, is yours?
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #35 on: February 13, 2020, 10:24:00 AM »

Phone line is lying on the rocks/earth for a large portion of the route - maybe 50%. The first mile nearest to the exchange is underground. That is all high ground too.
« Last Edit: February 13, 2020, 10:30:29 AM by Weaver »
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #36 on: February 13, 2020, 10:42:33 AM »

I’s speculate that the length of the line makes a difference too.

Partly because a longer line makes a bigger target.

But also because, if we assume that there is protection at the exchange (or FTTC cabinet), then stray voltages are grounded at that point.   When unwanted currents flow, the longer the wire from the grounded point, the higher the voltage at the ungrounded end can be.   

I’d imagine capacitive and inductive effects of line length are more significant that the simple dc resistance of the wire but same principle would apply... the further you are from the point of protection, the less you’d benefit from it.
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #37 on: February 13, 2020, 02:59:06 PM »

I agree. And the long length of the line increases the likelihood and magnitude of any GPR/EPR and from that comes damage from ‘slow cooking’, ie modest currents rather than huge ones, but enough to cook network interfaces for example. I would say this is more likely because one end of the line can more easily be right under the cloud, inside the footprint, while the far end is well outside the footprint, thus seeing the full potential difference between inside and outside.



BTOR engineer arrived here a short while ago; in the house testing line 4.

The line has been up and down like a yo-yo; so bad that I should have disconnected it from the bonded set in fact, if I’d had any sense, as it was probably giving a ‘negative contribution’ on the whole, with all the packet loss seen at times poisoning the reliability of the whole combined pipe.

The verdict is that the short BT-to-RJ11 cable that I was using had gone bad, presumably due to the lightning cooking. I had swapped out modems but not that cable. So it means that this is my fault.  :(  :-[
« Last Edit: February 13, 2020, 03:55:35 PM by Weaver »
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #38 on: February 13, 2020, 06:27:50 PM »

How annoying. :(

We once had a house alarm that stopped working every time there was the slightest scent of lightning in the air.  Clearly just inadequate protection on the vulnerable inputs.   It was under a maintenance contract and each time it failed and we called out the engineer he would simply reset and reconfigured it, which did the trick.    He’d then explain that the contract didn’t cover lightning damage and attempt to charge us a callout fee. >:(

I solved the problem by looking over his shoulder as he entered the alarm’s engineer maintenance code, which the maintenance company liked to think they could keep secret.  Armed with that code I was able to reset it myself after storms and, better still, was able to terminate the maintenance contract. :graduate:
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #39 on: February 18, 2020, 10:56:41 AM »

It looks as if possibly modem 4 has been cooked. It has been showing dripping blood all night. Email from AA arrived, warning me about it, such excellent service from David. How many times has your ISP contacted you with a warning ? :-)

Modem 4 was new 9 days ago. It’s a DLink DSL-320B-Z1. As instructed by AA, have swapped modems 3 and 4 to see if the badness moves to line 3. If I can find another DLink modem I’ll put that into service instead.

Might finally get new modems programmed today. Could not secure help of my beloved last week; it’s been 9 days and I still haven’t put the new ZYXEL VMG1312-B10A modems in yet. ??? :-[ :(
« Last Edit: February 18, 2020, 11:08:47 AM by Weaver »
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burakkucat

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #40 on: February 18, 2020, 05:29:32 PM »

It looks as if possibly modem 4 has been cooked.

  :o  :'(
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #41 on: February 18, 2020, 06:15:58 PM »

Today there have been no problems on line 3 or 4. So what was going on is a mystery, or modem 3 (the old modem 4) which is under suspicion has not yet gone wrong or else it is line 4 that was bad and it is deciding to play nicely for a bit.
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #42 on: February 19, 2020, 03:10:41 PM »

I have finally after ten days got round to programming two new modems and the missus hates me now after recruiting her to do the pokey thing while I operated the iPad. Modems 3 and 4 replaced with two new B10As from eBay, they certainly look very new anyway.

I still have a mountain of units on order from eBay but have not turned up yet, but perhaps the weather chaos down in England has slowed things up. Janet chased eBay seller today for me. Those will need flashing and configuring at some point.
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mofa2020

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #43 on: February 19, 2020, 08:47:13 PM »

Hello Weaver

I found this UPS which have a RJ11 in/out surge protection I believe it could be useful with weather in your area also it will help in case of power issues, it may or may not work with ADSL service I do not know but thought you might be interested in something like that.

https://www.effekta.com/catalogue/#page=20
« Last Edit: February 19, 2020, 09:45:43 PM by mofa2020 »
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Weaver

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Re: Lightning Storm (Early Feb 2020) - More Equipment Damaged
« Reply #44 on: February 20, 2020, 12:32:01 AM »

Than you very much for that link ! I’ll try anything. I’ve noticed this on other UPS models and then forgotten all about it. I need four units to protect all the lines so that’s a nuisance. I would be very interested to do a test to see if they can avoid detrimental effect on signal quality and link performance - something that is hard-fought-for, and very precious, the links being so slow anyway.

I think other kitizens [?] have been sceptical about the effectiveness of devices without a strong path to earth, and so in order to be effective and reliable, a system would have to have a dump-current-to-earth design, being connected straight into a path to the house earth. I’m not sure how well these things work in the case of slow cooking, which is a worrisome problem case, ie with a modest current long-term and without a very high voltage.
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