Grounding your dish?

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Illinois.

I can't have the dish relocated. They used some kind of sticky sheet of tar to waterproof the dish on the roof. I don't want to have the dish removed, because that would leave holes in the roof, and that sticky tar is a bitch to remove.

Just leave the foot there. Take it off the next time you redo the roof. You said in the other thread you were going to do that ia few years anyway. Then have the system done right.
 
Just leave the foot there. Take it off the next time you redo the roof. You said in the other thread you were going to do that ia few years anyway. Then have the system done right.

Where the ground rod is, there is no line of sight at all, its all trees.
 
It appears after doing some reading the mast does not have to be grounded, only the coax.

The grounding requirement of the NEC for antenna mast is outdated. I have spoken to several engineers about lightning. One is a SBCA instructor with a 50 year back ground in lightning research, another a professer, smart smart people. They both agree that installing a ground conductor for a dish mast is most likely not a benefit and may do more harm
 
From my understanding, since electricity likes to find the easiest path, the metal dish on top of a roof, grounded to a ground, would make it more likely for lightning to hit, frying equipment.

Grounding dish=bad, grounding coax=good.
 
From my understanding, since electricity likes to find the easiest path, the metal dish on top of a roof, grounded to a ground, would make it more likely for lightning to hit, frying equipment.

Grounding dish=bad, grounding coax=good.

The theroy behind the ground is that the static build up on a dish will attract a strike. Thus the dish needs to be grounded.
 
Well I called Directv and Directv is going to get ahold of the installer tomorrow and is supposedly going to have them come out sometime to ground the dish properly.

I also found out that installers get paid per job, and can loose pay for that job if they did not ground the dish...interesting.

My previous install was not grounded either.

Looks like MultiBand DOES train their techs on grounding, but I guess the installers get too lazy and think grounding is a PITA.

grounded.png
 
Dude, Coinmaster, you are making this so much harder than it needs to be.

Run coax from the dish to the area near the phone box, install the ground block about 2 ft from the phone box. Connect a ground wire from the ground block to the phone box's ground line that should be going from the box to a ground rod at the foundation of the house or possibly connects to the electrical box's ground.

Then run your coax from the ground block to the receiver.

The above assumes your telco grounded to code.
 
your dish is supposed to be grounded, and that tech would fail a qc, if you call 1800dtv and bitch theyll send someone to ground it, but most techs just dont care. If your house gets hit 12g copper isnt going to protect anything.

Yes and no.

One of the points of grounding the antenna is to provide a path for the strike current to go. But... it is required by most insurance policies to have your antennas properly grounded. Also, one of the points of grounding is to allow that antenna to be closest as possible to 0V (ground potential). If it is higher than 0V, the likelihood of "streamers" (charged particles) coming from the dish and meeting lightning charges is increased. So, the whole point of grounding is to REDUCE the probability that you will get hit and to cover your insurance policy requirements.

Demand the grounding. Half assed installations should not be accepted. This isn't hard and D* is making an arm and a leg profit. They can afford the ground wire. The copper clad ground wire also has less resistance than the aluminum outer shield of the coax making it a better ground. Nevertheless, ground both at the terminal block. Make sure the terminal block is grounded to the home common ground or the city's cold water line if you don't have a common home ground stake.
 
You don't just pound in another rod because without bonding to the house ground there's actually measurable electrical potential between the 2 electrically separate rods.
I put in a second rod, bought 100 feet of #6 and ran it around to the house ground rod and tied it in. Didn't cost that much. Hardest part would have been putting in the ground rod, but my electrician taught me a couple tricks for that and it went surprisingly fast.

I didn't ground it with any thought that it would keep lightning from damaging my house if it hit. I grounded it to dissipate static and *possibly* lower the chance of getting hit in the first place. Static builds on the antenna just from wind-borne dust particles blowing across it.

You can introduce a hum into your AV equipment by not having the 2nd ground rod bonded to the main ground. The 2 separate rods act almost like 2 poles of a battery and the measurable voltage between them varies with soil conditions.

Doing it yourself and NOT doing it right, could possibly open you up to some liability in a case where let's say.... lightning strikes your house, the insurance adjuster comes out. "Oh, look. Homeowner modified electrical system and it's not to code. I see contributing factor. I guess this damage isn't covered." How likely is that scenario? Depends how good the adjuster is at his job (which is to see if this was truly an accident or if it was INDUCED which mitigates insurance liability). REGARDLESS of the fact that in case of a lightning strike, all bets are off as to whether the antenna ground does any real good, it's how current code is written and you'll be doing yourself a favor to do it right or leave it alone.
 
Now, I never claimed to be the brightest bulb but when I ask a question and someone gives an answer that is true, I would look to follow it instead of trying to make one up to fit what I want...But that is just me...
 
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