ramesh.khiani Posted April 21, 2021 Share Posted April 21, 2021 How can we protect Control4 Lighting equipment from the Lightning strikes and power surges and spikes. What Control4 recommends regarding the protection of the Control4 Panels, modules and the Network equipment? Which devices are recommended and must be added in the project, which are the most rugged and cost-effective protection devices available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BraydonH Posted April 21, 2021 Share Posted April 21, 2021 You can get a whole home surge (lighting) protector installed at your main electrical panel. And if you want to protect the equipment you can always get a UPS, Power Conditioner, or Surge Suppressor. Price can vary hugely on those types of products so really you need to decide how much protection you want. This is probably overkill but it would indeed protect your gear. https://www.panamax.com/product/1500va-rack-mount-ups/ If your looking for something cheap that has a clean finish this will do https://www.snapav.com/shop/en/snapav/outlets-receptacles/wattbox-reg%3B-in-wall-power-conditioner---2-outlets-wb-200-iw-1g-2-wht This thing will not protect to the same level as the UPS above but its great for TV and components and such. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mstafford388 Posted April 21, 2021 Share Posted April 21, 2021 There is only so much you can do about lighting. Putting surge/power conditioning on the power coming into a home or device is easy. Protecting every piece of copper in a home is not a cost effective proposition, and lighting will jump on anything. Like Braydon said you can protect your whole house surge wise at the electrical panel but just don't go into that thinking it will protect you from lightning strikes, it will not. I will say we are in Tampa so we get more lightning than most and off the top of my head I can think of 1 job we've had C4 lighting products go bad due to lightning, and we install lots of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
videostorm Posted April 21, 2021 Share Posted April 21, 2021 By far, the most common reason your equipment gets electrically damaged is multiple earth grounds. Your home / building should have a SINGLE earth ground, located where service enters the building or the main electrical panel. The "ground" wire in your home should be connected to actual earth ground only at that point. Unfortunately, building often have other earth grounds. Usually this is extra ground stakes (sat dishes, cable feeds, etc) or the ground wire physically connected to metal building frames or water piping. If you do have the dreaded multi earth grounds, you will suffer damage from strikes anywhere near your property. The current travels through the ground water and will take a "shortcut" through your house because of the multi ground contacts. C4 User 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted April 22, 2021 Share Posted April 22, 2021 Only time I had C4 lighting devices damaged by a lightning strike was a strike that literally blew a hole in the concrete pad on the side of the house that covered their water well.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mindedc1 Posted April 22, 2021 Share Posted April 22, 2021 The two issues are lightning and surges. Lightning is thousands of volts and thousands of amps. Surges are hundreds of volts and hundreds of amps. The best defense against lightning is proper grounding just like video storm mentioned above. A single ground or properly bonding your grounds with 6awg copper is the way to go. I would engage an electrical engineer to validate your grounding and I would the. Engage an electrician to audit your panel(s)and pop off a few wall plates to verify the house was wired properly. If you have antennas for any reason (tv, wifi, satellite, ham radio etc) those should have a gas passivated lightning arrester with replaceable cartridges. The cartridges are like a neon bulb and will conduct a lightning level strike to ground and destroy the capsule in the process. Please keep in mind that a direct strike will blow apart concrete, blow the Sheetrock off your walls etc... I've seen it blow a vcr out of a rack and embed it in the opposite wall... proper grounding will bleed down charge on your devices and minimize this risk. The other concern are surges in the form of 200-500+ volts on your AC line. There are several causes but grounding won't help with this. Mov or PTC based arrestors are the best defense here. A good example of this is a quality "surge strip" like a tripplite isobar. Cheap surge strips might have a circuit breaker or just an on/off switch which are both useless for protection purposes. There are whole house versions an electrician would be delighted to install on your panel. These work by having a sacrificial element (I.e. MOV) that starts conducting at a voltage higher than line level and it shorts the over voltage to ground. If the device triggers and protects it will literally be fried and you have to throw it away and replace it. They are very effective and I personally have one but I also made sure I had a properly grounded electrical system in the house first. if you have high dollar gear it's worth the investment as typical homeowner policies will only cover $2500 in damages from lightning...you can also inexpensively add a rider fir your high dollar gear... videostorm 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted April 22, 2021 Share Posted April 22, 2021 6 hours ago, mindedc1 said: Lightning is thousands of volts and thousands of amps Make that millions of volts and tens of thousands of amps 6 hours ago, mindedc1 said: Surges are hundreds of volts and hundreds of amps weeeelll...Still would be thousands of amps at the inlet level. Of course that doesn't make a difference to the overall point of the otherwise excellent post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mindedc1 Posted April 23, 2021 Share Posted April 23, 2021 You are right, I was going more for scale of where the protection kicks in vs accuracy. Primary I don't want anyone getting a false sense of security or wasting any money.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucecampbell Posted April 26, 2021 Share Posted April 26, 2021 Insurance is good protection! I had a surge kill my pool controller, pool LED's and several C4 dimmers and keypads. $7,500 NZD insurance money later and all sorted. I asked insurance if they would cover the cost of adding a whole home surge protector, they said no.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Lowe Posted April 26, 2021 Share Posted April 26, 2021 1 hour ago, brucecampbell said: Insurance is good protection! I had a surge kill my pool controller, pool LED's and several C4 dimmers and keypads. $7,500 NZD insurance money later and all sorted. I asked insurance if they would cover the cost of adding a whole home surge protector, they said no.... second this. home insurance might be the best coverage for a total loss of your system. but for one or two keypads the other suggestions are better advice so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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