I have a question about grounding blocks, I have a Dish Pro with a quad lnb,but only one cable has a grounding block on it. Do I need to have all cables grounded or is this over kill? Thanks
Grounding blocks
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All Cables should be grounded, The 4 lines come to two Dual Ground Blocks, I have seen a quad ground block, but haven't used them yet...
Can you confirm this please?
I am confused, I think. You said that all cables should be grounded. I have read that all cables coming from a Dishpro LNB should go DIRECTLY to the DishPro reciever, without splitting the cable. How are you supposed to ground the cable without splitting the cable? Please advise. Thanks: Lyle022266 said:
Splitting or Splitting
By "splitting" they mean not to use a splitter which provides one input but two or more outputs. A grounding block provides one input and one output per coax cable and is moreless transparent to the LNB and receiver.
Parlyle said:I am confused, I think. You said that all cables should be grounded. I have read that all cables coming from a Dishpro LNB should go DIRECTLY to the DishPro reciever, without splitting the cable. How are you supposed to ground the cable without splitting the cable? Please advise. Thanks: Lyle
By "splitting" they mean not to use a splitter which provides one input but two or more outputs. A grounding block provides one input and one output per coax cable and is moreless transparent to the LNB and receiver.
Lyle,
You're having a bit of a definition crisis.
It is true that a cable from a LNB cannot be split and must run directly from the LNB to a receiver or switch. However, in order to meet NEC rules for grounding the cable has to be segmented in order to accomodate a grounding block.
As used on this board the term "split" refers to using a device known as a "splitter" to divide one cable into multiple cables to feed multiple devices.
You're having a bit of a definition crisis.
It is true that a cable from a LNB cannot be split and must run directly from the LNB to a receiver or switch. However, in order to meet NEC rules for grounding the cable has to be segmented in order to accomodate a grounding block.
As used on this board the term "split" refers to using a device known as a "splitter" to divide one cable into multiple cables to feed multiple devices.
Thanks for the answer!
Now, I have another question. I have all of the 4 coax cables coming off of the Quad down into PVC conduit, under ground for 30 feet up to an LB which goes into the basement. Then they are run to each of the 3 recievers (Dish-811, Dish-510, and a Dish-508, and 1 not used. When they get to the recievers I used "SurgEnders" on the ends of the cables hoping that this would be sufficient in case of a surge of current. Is this OK?, and if not where should I put the grounding blocks? I will try to post a picture of my setup, to let you see what I have to contend with.
Thanks, and have a pleasant week. Lyle
The cables in the background are from my older dish on the roof. These were Legacy equipment and I grounded them as they came from the roof. They are not used in this setup. I misread the DP setup, thinking that the coax's have to go to the recievers without being cut or split. That is why you see those cables on the side of the house.
Now, I have another question. I have all of the 4 coax cables coming off of the Quad down into PVC conduit, under ground for 30 feet up to an LB which goes into the basement. Then they are run to each of the 3 recievers (Dish-811, Dish-510, and a Dish-508, and 1 not used. When they get to the recievers I used "SurgEnders" on the ends of the cables hoping that this would be sufficient in case of a surge of current. Is this OK?, and if not where should I put the grounding blocks? I will try to post a picture of my setup, to let you see what I have to contend with.
Thanks, and have a pleasant week. Lyle
The cables in the background are from my older dish on the roof. These were Legacy equipment and I grounded them as they came from the roof. They are not used in this setup. I misread the DP setup, thinking that the coax's have to go to the recievers without being cut or split. That is why you see those cables on the side of the house.
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Actually, rather than using a plain grounding block, I'd buy a 10-pack of Grounding Blocks with Arrestors and use as many as you need of them. The difference is that a normal grounding block can really only drain the charge from the outer shield, but doesn't help if the high voltage gets induced onto the center conductor. A gas tube is non-conductive up to the "breakover" voltage, but once that voltage level is reached it can shunt the voltage to ground. Thus you can get protection on both the shield and the center conductor, without degrading the signal (at least in theory). By the way, the phone company often uses gas tubes in their protectors, which is what makes me think they're a good idea.
However you bring up what I think is an all too common problem - the cable is routed from the dish directly to the receiver with no ground at all (sometimes this is done because we aren't even sure it's going to work at all so we start with the most minimal of connections that should work, then add things one at a time and see if the system still works - unfortunately the ground is one of the things we forget to add). THEN we discover that a) we didn't leave a whole lot of slack in the cable, and b) we didn't run it anywhere near a good ground.
In most homes the only really good ground is the ground rod that's located under or near the electric meter. If you have phone or cable service, you should see where they connected their grounds to this main ground.
Unfortunately, if your satellite cable entry point is a long way from that ground, you may be tempted to just drive another ground rod. But as it turns out that is illegal unless you connect it back to the original ground rod with a heavy (#6 or thicker, if I recall correctly) wire. So you might just as well run your ground wire back to that original house ground rod and be done with it, except that it's probably also technically illegal for the run to ground rod to be anything other than short and direct.
So let's say your dish is in your front yard and your electric meter is in the back. What you are technically supposed to do is run the cable around the house to get close to the house ground, connect it to a properly installed grounding block there, and then bring it into the house. Of course the longer the run the more the signal is degraded. It sometimes gets to be one of those situations where you can't win.
However if you talk to any honest electrician they will tell you that sometimes you run into a situation where you just can't follow the demands of the National Electrical Code 100%, so they do the best they can and hope the electrical inspector will pass it anyway.
So let's say that you have a cable from your dish that enters the house in a basement or crawl space. In my opinion (and I am NOT an electrician) I would say that the best thing to do would be to place your lightning protectors as close to the entry point into the building as possible. Then run a heavy ground wire from those protectors to the house ground rod using the shortest route possible. For example, if the house has only a crawl space, let the ground wire lay on the ground until it gets to the ground rod, then connect it to the wire coming off the ground rod using a split bolt type connector.
If you have a basement it will probably be a lot easier since the circuit breaker or fuse box is usually in the basement, and there is always a wire running from the breaker box to the ground rod. Run the heavy ground wire from your protectors back to the heavy ground coming off the breaker box (running to the ground rod) and connect them using a split bolt connector (if you have an electrician in the family they might even be willing to connect the wire to the ground wire bus bar inside the breaker box for you).
But if you do either of the above, bear in mind that strictly speaking it may not precisely follow the electrical code, again because the protectors should be physically close to the actual ground. To be 100% legal you could drive a new ground rod right under the point where your wires enter the house, then bond it to the existing ground using a heavy wire run between the two ground rods on the OUTSIDE of the house. Yeah, I know, by now you have a concrete sidewalk and/or driveway, trees, shrubs, an attached garage and/or deck, and all manner of other obstacles in the path of that connecting bond wire. If that is the case, and your only choices are to not ground at all, to use a separate ground rod that's not bonded to the house ground, or to run the ground wire across the basement ceiling, I'd personally do the latter, even though the purists may squawk about it. Since so many people don't bother to ground their systems at all (and pay the price when lightning hits nearby), I figure any reasonably good connection to the house ground system is better than none.
BUT, if I were going to run the wire across the basement ceiling I'd use the heaviest copper wire I could find (#6 MINIMUM, and remember that as the wire gets larger the gauge gets smaller, so for example #10 is much smaller than #6), so that it is more than able to carry any current to ground without overheating. After all, you don't want the discharge of induced voltage from a nearby lightning strike to start a fire in the basement ceiling! So the wire has to be large enough to drain all the voltage that might be picked up on your coax cable(s) without overheating to any noticible degree.
Sometimes, there are no really great answers to a problem, so you can only do the best you can. But if it's at all possible to do it the "correct" way I would certainly advise doing so.
However you bring up what I think is an all too common problem - the cable is routed from the dish directly to the receiver with no ground at all (sometimes this is done because we aren't even sure it's going to work at all so we start with the most minimal of connections that should work, then add things one at a time and see if the system still works - unfortunately the ground is one of the things we forget to add). THEN we discover that a) we didn't leave a whole lot of slack in the cable, and b) we didn't run it anywhere near a good ground.
In most homes the only really good ground is the ground rod that's located under or near the electric meter. If you have phone or cable service, you should see where they connected their grounds to this main ground.
Unfortunately, if your satellite cable entry point is a long way from that ground, you may be tempted to just drive another ground rod. But as it turns out that is illegal unless you connect it back to the original ground rod with a heavy (#6 or thicker, if I recall correctly) wire. So you might just as well run your ground wire back to that original house ground rod and be done with it, except that it's probably also technically illegal for the run to ground rod to be anything other than short and direct.
So let's say your dish is in your front yard and your electric meter is in the back. What you are technically supposed to do is run the cable around the house to get close to the house ground, connect it to a properly installed grounding block there, and then bring it into the house. Of course the longer the run the more the signal is degraded. It sometimes gets to be one of those situations where you can't win.
However if you talk to any honest electrician they will tell you that sometimes you run into a situation where you just can't follow the demands of the National Electrical Code 100%, so they do the best they can and hope the electrical inspector will pass it anyway.
So let's say that you have a cable from your dish that enters the house in a basement or crawl space. In my opinion (and I am NOT an electrician) I would say that the best thing to do would be to place your lightning protectors as close to the entry point into the building as possible. Then run a heavy ground wire from those protectors to the house ground rod using the shortest route possible. For example, if the house has only a crawl space, let the ground wire lay on the ground until it gets to the ground rod, then connect it to the wire coming off the ground rod using a split bolt type connector.
If you have a basement it will probably be a lot easier since the circuit breaker or fuse box is usually in the basement, and there is always a wire running from the breaker box to the ground rod. Run the heavy ground wire from your protectors back to the heavy ground coming off the breaker box (running to the ground rod) and connect them using a split bolt connector (if you have an electrician in the family they might even be willing to connect the wire to the ground wire bus bar inside the breaker box for you).
But if you do either of the above, bear in mind that strictly speaking it may not precisely follow the electrical code, again because the protectors should be physically close to the actual ground. To be 100% legal you could drive a new ground rod right under the point where your wires enter the house, then bond it to the existing ground using a heavy wire run between the two ground rods on the OUTSIDE of the house. Yeah, I know, by now you have a concrete sidewalk and/or driveway, trees, shrubs, an attached garage and/or deck, and all manner of other obstacles in the path of that connecting bond wire. If that is the case, and your only choices are to not ground at all, to use a separate ground rod that's not bonded to the house ground, or to run the ground wire across the basement ceiling, I'd personally do the latter, even though the purists may squawk about it. Since so many people don't bother to ground their systems at all (and pay the price when lightning hits nearby), I figure any reasonably good connection to the house ground system is better than none.
BUT, if I were going to run the wire across the basement ceiling I'd use the heaviest copper wire I could find (#6 MINIMUM, and remember that as the wire gets larger the gauge gets smaller, so for example #10 is much smaller than #6), so that it is more than able to carry any current to ground without overheating. After all, you don't want the discharge of induced voltage from a nearby lightning strike to start a fire in the basement ceiling! So the wire has to be large enough to drain all the voltage that might be picked up on your coax cable(s) without overheating to any noticible degree.
Sometimes, there are no really great answers to a problem, so you can only do the best you can. But if it's at all possible to do it the "correct" way I would certainly advise doing so.
It's done!
Well, with the help of an electrician friend of mine, I was able to get the grounding that I needed. I ordered a quad ground block from DishStore and put that in the basement where the coax comes from the LB. Then he suggested that I use the existing grounding rods that I had for the Dish when I had it on the roof. I had pounded them into the ground, because I couldn't pull them out. He said that I should put the block in the basement, use a #6 bare copper wire to go from the block through the basement window sill, and out to the rod in the ground. (I had to dig to get to it). I have done that and did a check of the signal, and all is ok. One thing I wanted to ask. I used SuperLok (SLC6) connectors on all of the ends of the coax, and these are doing fine. My question is, I tried to use the Digicon connectors and found out that the back end of the connector comes off of the main screw end. It just falls back off of the main connector. Is this right or am I compressing it wrong? I have had the best luck with the SuperLok, and think I'll stay with them. Thanks for the forum: Lyle
Well, with the help of an electrician friend of mine, I was able to get the grounding that I needed. I ordered a quad ground block from DishStore and put that in the basement where the coax comes from the LB. Then he suggested that I use the existing grounding rods that I had for the Dish when I had it on the roof. I had pounded them into the ground, because I couldn't pull them out. He said that I should put the block in the basement, use a #6 bare copper wire to go from the block through the basement window sill, and out to the rod in the ground. (I had to dig to get to it). I have done that and did a check of the signal, and all is ok. One thing I wanted to ask. I used SuperLok (SLC6) connectors on all of the ends of the coax, and these are doing fine. My question is, I tried to use the Digicon connectors and found out that the back end of the connector comes off of the main screw end. It just falls back off of the main connector. Is this right or am I compressing it wrong? I have had the best luck with the SuperLok, and think I'll stay with them. Thanks for the forum: Lyle
