sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information grounding the system

Todays digital systems require a isolated earth ground and even though some may argue using the electrical groung of your power is not isolated, everything else that is plugged in has the same path. I've lived in Georgia for 12 years before coming back to Ohio and I'm convinced that a isolated, dedicate earth groung of #6- #10 is the safest way to go.

I'm going to disagree with you about todays digital systems requiring an isolated ground. Isolated grounds are a big misconception and almost always do nothing and sometimes make things worse.

But then I gotta ask you here what you consider an "isolated ground" to be. If it's a wire to a driven ground rod that's not going to do anything and might actually be against code depending on how the ground lug on the equipment is connected internally.

Justbill has it correct. All grounds should go back to a common point- electrical, telco, CATV. This minimizes differences in potential that will damage equipment.

A question here also- how many of us provide protectors on the CO lines? We do and these are connected to the same ground point as the equipment.

-Hal

Hey Guys,
I have been in the industry for 20 + years and I have to admit this is a topic that is never ending and seems never to be resolved no matter who is in the room and what there credentials are, that being said IMHO the very best method for grounding are the ones “Spelled Out” in detail in the NEC code book, granted cross checking through NEC for this reply turned up no less than 1876 occurrences of the word GROUNDING, and very few of them are ones that affect our industry, they should non the less never be ignored or modified for our convenience, time constraints etc. For anybody reading this far our section of the code book is one of the smallest, however if you have never taken the time to do so anyone from the owner ,designer to the newest greenhorn should read it and learn to use what has been ruled on and simply adapt it to the given situation. For those that have never learned how to work through the goobilty goop that is poured out on about every other page try this, open the book to the first pages, in there you will find CONTENTS, look around for the answer to a question there, if you have no luck don’t
give up (IMHO what follows is the Holy Grail to working with the codes) turn to the back and there you find the INDEX, here is the meat of anything that could be asked of
a given situation and what measures have been adopted as an industry standard. As to the size of the ground wire I keep #12 green stranded around, will work on any cabinet rated at 20 amps or less and meets all the code requirements!
One measure I have adopted over the years is to take a VOM (analog as a digital is to sensitive and can show voltages that are really nothing more than EMF) and just before attaching a ground to a chassis read the voltage from the ground lug to the wire you are about to connect, it should be zero, if anything else shows up its time to find out why…..
The code book almost seems to have been written by lawyers and its not that easy to use at first but you will find like any other tool the more you use it the more comfortable you will become with it……and in case you are going to leaf through it and still find it hard to understand they have what is called a HANDBOOK it has taken all the weird notations and tables and broken them down to everyday terms and there is a lot of pictures in there that can be colored in while your waiting for someone to come and unlock a closet door. HTH

check this site which explaines HOW LIGHTING
COMES IN ON THE GROUND SYSTEM AND USES THE PHONE LINES AS A REMOTE GROUND VIA THE EQUIPMENT .https://gpr-expert.com/clayton-ern.htm ALSO GO TO LIGHTINGSTORM.COM I HAVE USED THERE SERVICE TO PROVE TO LIGHTING STRIKES
TO THE INSURANCE CO.

We're not talking putting a phone system in a sub station. That's been common practice for over 30 years to use isolation transformers on lines into a substation, for all the reasons mentioned on the WEB site, so makes sence that cells on a power distrabution tower would follow the same principle. As far as the electric code goes, they don't really address the grounding of telephone or any other electronic equipment. Like I said I respect everyones different experiences with grounding, but I'll stick with what's tried and true, until I see some different spec's come out on the subject. Guess bottom line is, if it works for you go for it.

Quote
As far as the electric code goes, they don't really address the grounding of telephone or any other electronic equipment.

TRY HERE:
https://www.colopoint.net/facility/ground.php
https://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsar...ersus-B onding-Part-9-of-12~20050602.php https://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsar...ersus-B onding-Part-2-of-12~20041014.php
https://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsar...us-Bonding-and-the-2008-NEC~20050330.php
https://www.eham.net/articles/6848
https://www.mikeholt.com/cgi-bin/co...w.northern-tech.com/Engineering/faqs.htm

If all readers are going to get out of this is that a ground is a gound is a ground, sorry its just not that way,there are huge differences as to where and how it gets done
and if done properly.
The last time I read through 800 of the code it seems to me that in more than half the section on every page is something to due with ground....
The whole of article 250 is nothing but grounding and how its to be done...to all follwing this thread if you havent already take the time and read whats out there....
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION !!!!!!

[This message has been edited by FiberTech (edited July 12, 2005).]

Believe me I read many of the sites you've posted, just do a search on google and you'll find more than enough to keep you going. Although the NEC addresses grounding and bonding they don't specifically state that all grounds should be common, they just tell you the resistance rule between grounds. I don't think I'm aguing with your point maybe just be reading parts different. As far as your statement on all grounds NOT being equal, I agree, that's why the theory of bonding all grounds together came to be in the first place.

I always ground the system. Ground as close as you can get to the actual ground ,ground rod, water pipe as it enters the building, etc. You want to go to a massive amount of metal of you can like building ground.

Grounding has 2 purposes. One is to provide a clean refrence point for the electronics to operate from and the other is to protect people and equipment.

Going to the the ground source like the rod which is tied to Power company power and the rest of the town (massiveamount of metal) will reduce the noise on the ground.

Damage/injury occurs when the voltage potential is different and you or your equipment are the path the electricity follows to even the difference. Your computer is grounded to electrical ground and hopefully building ground. Your phone system should be connected to the same ground. Your co lines from the street, if protected, will clamp to ground at 300 volts or so. The idea is if lightning strikes near you you want the voltage to rise the million or so volts and fall again in all your equipment at the same tome. If you have a single port on your system going out doors and 100 feet away, when the lightning strikes your building your voltage will go way up and the ground at the other end of the 100 foot wire will be lower. You will blow up the port in the system as the potential will be lower at that port. If you protect the 100 foot wire with lightning protection grounded to the same ground as the system you will be OK. The guy at the other end of the 100 foot wire will get lit up when the lightning hits your building because the protection you installed kept the voltage of the wire the same as ground in your building but the ground 100 feet away is much lower. So protect both ends of the 100 foot wire and we are all happy.

So, in conclusion, ground everything and protect everything and you can't run a ground wire too big back to the ground.

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I pretty much always use Panamax and co modules off of the towermax and ground my system right to it and have not ran into any issues but as i read more and more i just might be lucky!?!?! I will tell you i started using the ITWLinx Ultralinx UP-XX connectors for Digital station that are outside of the main building and you push them right on your 66block and ground them right to your Panamax ground and they've stopped constant problems at a site that we were having issues with and we use them everywhere we can unless it is a large amount of phones then will put in some hefty gas tube protection.