Telephone Surge Protection

morgan_man

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Telephone Surge Protection
We’ve just had our telephone line repaired after nine days. Turned out to be the i-Plate from BT.
Last week there were storms and lightning about 6 miles away and the BT engineer said these were the cause of the fried i-Plate. This got me thinking of solutions for telephone line surge protection. I’m quite a fan of the Belkin AV ones and have 6 or 7 about the house, including a single socket one with telephone line protection:
Belkin SurgeMaster, 1-Way MasterCube with Tel/Fax/Modem Protection
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-SurgeMaster-1-Way-MasterCube-Protection/dp/B0002AG0DE/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1391564779&sr=1-10&keywords=SurgeMaster
Belkin rate the telephone protection at 320 joules, which seems low to me, and the BT engineer said this would not protect our equipment. His only solution was to unplug the router cable when storms are about.
Now the ADSL line comes from the i-Plate to the single socket Belkin and out to a BT router and on to two Netgear routers. Then via a wired network to two PCs, large screen TV, Blu-ray player and two Humaxes. About £4k to replace if fried.
So I’m fairly keen to find a better protection solution.

Technical background
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/surge/telesurge.html#
There’s one made by Furse:
http://www.keison.co.uk/furse/furse11.htm
Satcure offer kits for a homemade one:
http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/phonesurge.htm
Or ready made from iTM
http://www.itm-components.co.uk/iqs/pdpfldbproperty1091.0/dbmatchid.243500/pdpfldbproperty1092.0/pdpfldbproperty1089.0/pdpfldbproperty1095.0/pdpfldbproperty1090.22530/sfa.view/pdpfldbproperty1093.0/pdpfldbproperty1094.0/lightning_protectors.html
Cheap solution from Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/RJ-11-Telephone-Protector-Thunder-Arrester/dp/B00AH76CHG/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2TA621X9MP8QP&coliid=I9J86I8GFSV69

So the easy solution is to unplug the router when stormy, but no good if we are out at the time. I could go wireless network but very expensive and slow with solid walls. Which leaves me with an electronic solution.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Chris
 
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So the easy solution is to unplug the router when stormy, but no good if we are out at the time. I could go wireless network but very expensive and slow with solid walls. Which leaves me with an electronic solution.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
BT's expensive switching computer is connected to wires all over town. It may suffer about 100 surges with each storm. How often is your town without phone service for four days after each storm? Never? Because the solution has been routine for over 100 years.

You have assumed a Belkin will somehow block or absorb a surge. They need you to assume that. It never happens. How will that 2 cm internal part stop what three kilometers of sky could not? How does is tens or hundreds of joules absorb a surge that might even be hundreds of thousands of joules? It cannot.

Best protection for cable TV is a wire from that cable and low impedance (ie 'less than 3 meters') to single point earth ground. A hardwire connects a surge to what harmlessly absorbs that energy. That is how all protection works. Something (ie the wire) makes a connectdion to what is protection.

Other incoming cables (ie telephone, AC electric) cannot connect directly to earth. So we do a next best thing. Replace that wire with a protector. Protector does what a wire would do better. But most important - and what should have almost all your attention - is protection. Single point earth ground.

Again, this is how it was done in every facility that cannot have damage (ie all BT switching centers). Some effective protection systems do not even have a protector. But earth ground always exists and defines every protection system. Protectors are simple science. Art of protection (and where hundreds of thosuands of joules harmlessly dissipate) is earth ground.
 

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