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jrscheibe
Freshman

Ground wire

We just got HughesNet in July....the first technician came out and installed our dish and router.  The technician unbeknownst to us hooked the ground wire to our LIGHTNING ROD GROUND WIRE.  Because of this improper installation, our dish, router, and adapter was hit by lightning in September.  We had 2 outlets and a phone burn up as well because of this.  If our home was still on a fuse system instead of a breaker system, our home would have caught on FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!  The second technician that came out after a month of not having any internet and fire damage to our home, said that the ground wire from the satellite dish is what caused this problem and that WE are supposed to cut it from the lightning rod ground wire because he couldn't.  This happened in September and they are still "investigating" our case because I refuse to pay $120 for the second technician to come out.  Our electrician bill to fix our burnt out outlets and replacement of a new phone costed us more than the fee.  NOT A HAPPY CUSTOMER....just lucky our house didn't catch fire!

8 REPLIES 8
BirdDog
Assistant Professor

You should repost this under the Tech Support page to get the help you need: https://community.hughesnet.com/t5/Tech-Support/bd-p/TechSupport

 

To be clear: You have a lightning rod protection system installed on your home and this is what the HughesNet ground was bonded to? If so that would be wrong. It should be bonded to whatever ground your main electical box is using, as in a sperate earth ground.

 

Is true if your HughesNet system is grounded to a lightning ground rod system it would open a path into your home grounding system if the rods took a strike.

 

Personally not a fan of lightning rod systems on residential buildings as they can actually cause more problems than they prevent. The induced current due to the proximity of the residential electrical circuit to the lightning rod circuit can create havoc.

 

Spent years in the military installing, maintaining and inspecting grounding systems for communications towers including huge satellite dishes and it is tricky stuff. Still on the smoke and mirrors side with a lot of luck thrown in.

 

Again, you should copy/paste and start a new post in the Tech Support section.


@BirdDog wrote:

Spent years in the military installing, maintaining and inspecting grounding systems for communications towers including huge satellite dishes and it is tricky stuff. Still on the smoke and mirrors side with a lot of luck thrown in.


One of the least favorite things to do is pouring water / pounding a ground rod into pure shale for light, shelter-based system.


* Disclaimer: I am a HughesNet customer and not a HughesNet employee. All of my comments are my own and do not necessarily represent HughesNet in any way.
C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Interesting...

 

From my understanding, LPS are required by NEC to be bonded to the homes grounding system/ring, as well as have it's own grounding rod.
NEC 250.106
NEC 250.60


Grounding.JPG

So, you're saying that something that wants the path of least resistance to ground managed to instead of hit it's primary rod (red), and didn't use the bonding wire (pink) and use the main service grounding rod(red), somehow went along the satellite ground wire (green), then back down the satellite coax (purple) then back up the 120v line(dark blue) frying numerous recepticles before it ever made it's way out to the electrical service ground and grounding rod.

I suspect you have more faith in your LPS protecting your home than you should.

BirdDog
Assistant Professor


@C0RR0SIVE wrote:

Interesting...

 

From my understanding, LPS are required by NEC to be bonded to the homes grounding system/ring, as well as have it's own grounding rod.
NEC 250.106
NEC 250.60


Grounding.JPG

So, you're saying that something that wants the path of least resistance to ground managed to instead of hit it's primary rod (red), and didn't use the bonding wire (pink) and use the main service grounding rod(red), somehow went along the satellite ground wire (green), then back down the satellite coax (purple) then back up the 120v line(dark blue) frying numerous recepticles before it ever made it's way out to the electrical service ground and grounding rod.

I suspect you have more faith in your LPS protecting your home than you should.


Something in the bonding is broken if the home lightning rods truly took a hit. I have my doubts the rods were hit. More like a close strike to the earth or tree very close. Had my well control box knocked out twice with close strikes before the guy bonded the well casing to nuetral. No problem since.

C0RR0SIVE
Associate Professor

Wouldn't surprise me if the bond is broken, however, I would be worried why the favored path would have been a super thin wire and coax instead of the ground rod.

I highly suspect the dish was actually hit directly instead of the LPS, a direct strike there would do everything mentioned by OP.  So unless OP was outside watching where each bolt hits...

How can one be 100% sure they installer grounded things right?

For my install, I see a heavier gauge green wire from the dish that the installer ran to a eletrical outlet on the side of my house.  Lifted up the edge of the plastic cover of the outlet (an unused one with not sockets but one that was there for future use) and ran a wire under the plastic housing.  Guessing he connected the green wire to a ground inside.  

Would that be a valid grounding of the system?

Regards

TJ

BirdDog
Assistant Professor


@C0RR0SIVE wrote:

Wouldn't surprise me if the bond is broken, however, I would be worried why the favored path would have been a super thin wire and coax instead of the ground rod.


LOL......great point. Was thinking more through the coax but still would not be a fault of the tiny signal ground wire.

 

Truthfully, a lightning strike anywhere close to a home can cause huge electrical problems. The induced voltage/current spreads out a good bit from the actual strike point. As they say, "An act of God/Nature".

 

I know when my well box was knocked out I saw the flash and sound about the same time and boy was it loud and bright!

 

EDIT: These grounding discussions always go into the weeds. There are way to many "what if's" and theoretcal calculations. Bottom line is a lightning strike does what it wants and follows no rules. No matter if a direct hit or 50, 100, 1000 feet away. Even the makeup of the soil/rock makes a difference.

Amanda
Moderator

Hello jrscheibe,

 

Welcome to our community and thank you for your post. We definitely want to make sure that this situation is taken care of promptly and without hassle. I see that yesterday your case was sent to the local dealer who installed the system to reach out to you and try to come to a resolution. Please let me know if you do not receive a call from them within 3-5 business days and we will move this further up the chain.

 

Thank you,

Amanda