On 11/27/2013 9:14 PM, 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.


You don't ground the phone line, you ground the lightning protector. The
protector technology has changed over the years but neither side of the
phone lines is ever tied to ground. The wires are designated "Tip and
Ring" with a standard color code of green for Tip and red for Ring.
This comes from the old days when an operator actually made connections
at a switchboard by manually plugging in a "phone plug" then flipping a
switch to ring the phone at the other end. Tip is the tip of the phone
plug and Ring is the ring around the shaft of the phone plug, much like
the 1/4" plug on a big set of stereo headphones. Anyway, there is a
separate surge arresting element connected from Tip and Ring to ground.
The elements have changed over the years from a carbon resistor or spark
gap to gas tube elements and now solid state elements that conduct
whenever a voltage surge comes in over either side of the phone line
pair. I know this stuff because I've had to argue with the phone company
when my customer's phone line is dead and there is nothing wrong with
the inside wiring of the building. Often lightning will burn out a
switching module of the switch at the phone company's central office
that serves that particular customer. I've had to add extra lightning
protection at commercial customer's locations because lightning was
damaging the multi line phone systems at their businesses. o_O

A very good source of parts and information about all things telephone
where I've purchased parts and systems:

http://www.sandman.com/

http://preview.tinyurl.com/k48cp4b

A lightning protector like what I picked up for a customer. This one has
gas tube modules which are replaceable by plugging in a new one:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/leo22nu

The same base but equipped with delta modules which are a hybrid of gas
tube and solid state elements. The modules are interchangeable:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/l8pauwm

TDD