sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Inter-Tel Telephones & Systems Lightening Protection

System 9.112
We recently took a lightening hit to our system. (Brief pause while everyone cringes.)
We lost a significant amount of DKSC cards and it really scrambled the poor cabinet's brains a little.
I ask our Inter-Tel rep if there was anything that could be done to prevent this. He said the lightening protection Inter-Tel sells is very expensive.
Does anyone else have any ideas on how we might prevent this in the future?

Anything that can take a hit of lightening is definetly going to be pricy. I am a big fan of APC UPS products.

Basically you sit down and think of the probablity of getting struck by lighting twice, the cost of those repairs, and the amount of money you are willing to spend to prevent that cost at that probability.

Go through APC's list of products until you hit the one that matches your budget.

lighten up, it's only lightning! (sorry..)

any idea if the hit came through the mains or through your phone lines? around here, i see a lot more systems damaged by strikes that come through the lines than the AC. that said, i encourage my customers to invest in both a good UPS as well as line protection.. a couple hundred bucks ought to buy you fairly decent protection.

It is important to understand that a UPS and power protection are two different things altogether. A UPS is designed to protect against power loss and power brownouts, not to protect from surges per se. The best solution is both, and for lightening protection, you will want to protect the main A/C and any trunk connections or station connections that go outside of the building. Grounding is a key aspect to protecting your system, and even to a system functioning reliably to start with. The Axxess should be grounded properly to an earth ground as should your lightning protection equipment. There is a right and wrong way to ground equipment as well. Ideally you will want to ground to the same ground as the A/C panel assuming that it is good. I am not an electrician however I have seen many a system blown up due to lightning and even some that malfunction from time to time due to a non-existent ground or one that is about as good as not having one.