On Thursday, November 28, 2013 3:56:46 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:46:37 -0500, wrote:



On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:14:26 -0600, wrote:



When the phone company installed my outdoor phone connection box, they

installed a separate ground rod. But the one for my electric panel is

50 feet away. I'm running my own phone line from my house to another

building at quite a distance. I intend to install another outdoor box

with built in lightning protection. (same as the one from the phone

company). The ground rod from my electric service is 6 feet away. Is

there any reason not to use the same rod? It dont seem to make much

sense to drive in another rod.



Note: I intend to also ground a tv antenna to it.



The NEC requires that ALL ground electrodes must be bonded together.

It is also the recommended practice for lightning protection.

If line powered telephone equipment is the only place here this bond

occurs (incidently) that will be where any difference is reconciled.

Back in the modem days, separate grounding systems was the most common

cause of smoking modems PCs etc



The same is true of satellite installations. They usually drive a

separate rod. You should bond this to your grounding electrode system

for the service.



In that case, I may as well just use the same ground rod.



That's how it's done in current code. An inter-system bonding
termination block is installed by the panel. It's connected
to the ground system for the panel and usually phone, cable, etc
are brought in near there and tied to it. If they can't be
brought in nearby, then they can be grounded elsewhere, but
that ground is then still supposed to be bonded back to the main ground
system for the building.




And since you mentioned the modems, as I said in my original post, the

phone line ground rod is 50 ft from the power ground rod. Being rural,

my only option for internet is a dialup modem, or spending a fortune on

satellite dish internet, which will force me to have satellite tv, and I

dont watch much tv. Every year I lose at least one modem from

lightning, even if the lightning is miles away. I've partly solved that

by unplugging the phone line from the modem when I'm offline. Maybe

that separate ground is why???? Cuz my phone lines are still wire and

underground.

Yes, if that's a seperate ground rod and not bonded to the
building system, you could have a big potential difference with
a lightning surge.