Another thought regarding grounds..... Poor, loose or improper grounding can cause many problems that might not be obvious to many people. Some of these problems can manifest themselves as unexplained problems with equipment, but the first thing that comes to my mind is what can happen if there are loose grounds or grounds in the wrong place which can cause voltage spikes when there are nearby lightning strikes. These spikes can take out electronics and even machines under the "wrong" conditions. One such problem can come from many "grounds" that are not all tied to the same point. Care must be used to prevent ground "loops" - unexpected high currents between "grounds" (such as from a nearby lightning strike) can cause extremely high voltage spikes.
A few years ago lightning hit a tree on the far side of my neighbors house, the power company transformer which feeds our two houses sits on the property line. I lost electronics and light-bulbs. When I built my workshop I discovered a loose ground wire (and only one ground rod - where the electrician said there should be 2) on the side of my house near the neighbor, but there is also a ground rod on the far side of my house which "grounds" my A/C unit. I think the surge currents from the lightning strike raised the mains voltage throughout my house because of the faulty ground. Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ RSA(R) Conference 2012 Save $700 by Nov 18 Register now http://p.sf.net/sfu/rsa-sfdev2dev1 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
