In uk.d-i-y, AlanG wrote:

I installed one on an explosives store back in the 60s. I used inch by
eighth copper strip and buried it in a loop around the whole building.
Any joins had to be copper riveted and soldered. It must have worked
okay since I never heard of any big bangs there until they shut the
mine in the 90s.

Excellent! And it kept the elephants away too, right? ;-)

(No nastiness intended, Alan - jsut that it's hard to do realistic
tests of a lightning conductor installation; hence the need you and
others have pointed out to follow well-researched design codes. 'Course,
you could always just slap something together based on misreading
something in one manufacturer's brochure, but no-one in this NG would
do such a thing. At least, no-one in *my* view of this NG. Ah, the
peace of a small but perfectly-formed killfile ;-)