Surges WILL come in via copper be that telecommunications or mains level power in and out. If you are in a lightning prevalent area I would suggest you invest in a proper mains surge protection on the inbound supply before it goes to your consumer unit or sub boards. Ditto any other ‘copper’ circuits should have protection, that run externally which act like giant tentacles when it comes to earth equipotential faults aka surges.

As for a building protection in the case of direct strikes, well then you’re really in the territory of lightning protection specialists looking at rods, copper straps and a network of earthing. Unless you live in a Scottish or Welsh castle it’s probably not something you’d consider.

In the UK generally the chances of repeat strikes in the same location are very low. Consequently unless there is some special reason the most sensible and cost effective form of lightning protection is insurance. That is protecting against lightning strikes will cost hundreds of times more than insurance which you should have anyway and unless it's really rubbish will cover lightning strikes anyway.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In the UK generally the chances of repeat strikes in the same location are very low. Consequently unless there is some special reason the most sensible and cost effective form of lightning protection is insurance. That is protecting against lightning strikes will cost hundreds of times more than insurance which you should have anyway and unless it's really rubbish will cover lightning strikes anyway.

I still think most people tend to believe that prevention is better than cure, maybe not going into the full extremes of lighting strike prevention but maybe not running copper(ethernet) on the roof of a building or around it, is generally a good start. I know i don't run copper outside, if a connection needs to be made outside it will be fibre (unless its something minor like CCTV camera or a external access point which should be earthed anyway)

added

I would still be a bit concerned doing that, especially considering that I have had numerous lighting strikes within a 100M radius over the years, maily trees, some short some tall and all within view of my front windows.

Edited by RR_The_IT_Guy (Tue 18-Jan-22 12:21:16)

During 25 years in the Merchant Navy I never experienced a direct hit to the ships that I was on. The only lightning associated damage was one noisy night when in the morning I found the radio-telex transceiver rather quiet. A small trifilar wound ferrite toroidal transformer for receiver aerial impedance matching circuit was rather charred, due likely induced currents. Managed to find some thin insulated wire and rewound the toroid and back in business.

Normal procedure was to earth transmitting aerials when not in use, receiving aerials took their chance and anyway three of those were in use 24/7.

Cheers!

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In the UK generally the chances of repeat strikes in the same location are very low. Consequently unless there is some special reason the most sensible and cost effective form of lightning protection is insurance. That is protecting against lightning strikes will cost hundreds of times more than insurance which you should have anyway and unless it's really rubbish will cover lightning strikes anyway.

Maybe not where you are, but it’s pretty regular in summer where we are in East Anglia.

Having gone through it - prevention is infinitely better than arguing the toss with insurance assessors and the utter hassle of replacing gear. It took ages to replace everything (insurance monies aside). It’s something you really want to avoid if you are in a high lightning strike area - and you will know if you are.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

In the UK generally the chances of repeat strikes in the same location are very low. Consequently unless there is some special reason the most sensible and cost effective form of lightning protection is insurance. That is protecting against lightning strikes will cost hundreds of times more than insurance which you should have anyway and unless it's really rubbish will cover lightning strikes anyway.

Maybe not where you are, but it’s pretty regular in summer where we are in East Anglia.

Having gone through it - prevention is infinitely better than arguing the toss with insurance assessors and the utter hassle of replacing gear. It took ages to replace everything (insurance monies aside). It’s something you really want to avoid if you are in a high lightning strike area - and you will know if you are.

I must agree being in the region (St Neots, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire) It's not happened to me yet since I try and prevent as much as possible.

How bad was it for you, did it burn all the cables and "solder" them into switches and ethernet ports?
Or did it just fry the switches and everything connected.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Surely you’d want to strip the black external sheath (and strength members) away before:
a) running it indoors (external grade cables are never a good call inside)
b) attempting to put any sort of field fit connector on the end. Anything larger than a 3mm OD sheath that was perfectly round would be impossible? Surely.

ROC cable is never run indoors and never has any kind of field fit connector on it.

It runs outside from the CBT to the external CSP where it is spliced on to the inside out cable, which already has a factory fitted connector on the end of it. This plugs into the ONT. Field fit connectors are no longer used due to their high failure rate.

What OH cable did OR use for CSP-less installs when they were doing them?

Tagged to last post

Has anyone come across or worked with the CommScope FHD-H01V fibre OH/UG connectorised cable used by Openreach? I came across it today and it was a lot flatter than I had expected with what looks like a single external strengthen along its length.

In reply to a post by RR_The_IT_Guy:

I would still be a bit concerned doing that, especially considering that I have had numerous lighting strikes within a 100M radius over the years, maily trees, some short some tall and all within view of my front windows.

Yes but where any of them the *same* tree? Lots of strikes in your immediate vicinity is not the same as the *same* place being stuck twice.