*MAKE SURE TO WATCH THE ORIGINAL INSTALL VIDEO:* ruclips.net/video/vnjMQLhp6LE/видео.html ⚡SOLAR WIRING DIAGRAM: tinyshinyhome.com/off-grid-solar-wiring-diagram
Tip for those drilling into metal, use a magnet and cloth to catch the metal fragments so they don't end up some place you don't want them (9:36). Also with the long runs, should add additional grounding rods at each different building location (13:45).
Another important thing you can add is a ionic dissipatior (also called lightning dissipator). This is very important to avoid being hit. This guy explained very well the whole thing. Cheers. ruclips.net/video/PurMG7KHdW4/видео.html
I used to work with a geophysicist who spent a lot of time in the desert. His answer for lightning protection was to encircle the property with wire fence and ground that to another length of fence that was buried horizontally a foot deep. The lightning would preferentially hit the wire fence. He said it suffered several strikes and did the job.
Hey Jonathan. I was an engineer that installed communication towers and have also installed some 10kw solar systems. I will give you a suggestion. It looks like the soil is rather soft there. Multiple ground rods can help but your resistance to the earth may still be rather high. It could still be 40 - 80 ohms and you need it close to or under 5 ohms. The easiest way to achieve this is go deep.. you can get ground rod couplers. Drive a rod in, couple it and drive another down on top of it. You can go down until you hit rock. 3 or 4 rods deep is ideal to really drop that grounding resistance. Of course you need to use an sds type heavy hammer drill with ground rod bit to keep driving deeper. You need steady force. If everything is bonded together you probably only need one deep ground on the entire system. Great video!
I agree, I worked for a telecommunications company and proper grounding was critical to protect our systems. In some of our cities we had ground rods that were much larger than you used at a premium price, our goals were to try to get under 3 ohms to ground measurements.
Yup. What those guys said. Be advised your choice of material matters because they begin to corrode as soon as you put them in the ground. A properly sized, high quality rod can be effective for 40 years. Cheap-o rods are usually effective for 15 years.
Another method that can get you much lower impedances is to increase the soil contact with secondary materials. Bend the top 12" of multiple ground rods up in at 90 degrees. Lay them into the bottom of a trench and cover the horizontal portions of the rod with a bentonite clay slurry before back filling. The bentonite will never dry out and it increases the ground rods' surface area contact by a very large percentage. When people talk about getting the resistance of a grounding electrode or field "below 5 ohms" they aren't talking about any test you can do with a multimeter. These measurements require specialty instruments that can do what is called a three point fall of potential test.
@chrisw2995 you are correct! Bentonite slurry fill around a deep ground rod would be great especially if a hole was bored 40 to 60 feet deep to get that ground resistance down below 5 ohms. It started getting costly though. Great comment.
With lightning the rise-time is fast as lightning and makes all conductors operate as proper ersonators in the RF region. I's where the real magic happens 😄
ANYONE who thinks they want to live off the grid needs to watch your videos. You share your wins & loses and educate everyone on what worked (or didn't) , why & what happened , and how you fixed it. Even if the only thing someone wants to do is raise chickens (much more involved than city folk think) they should watch your stuff. People don't really understand how much work and knowledge is involved in this lifestyle, then add to it that you are living out West in the high desert...you guys have my respect and admiration. Thank you for sharing your life with us :-)
If you have a well with a steel well casing you could ground to that too. Or just put up a lightning rod tower so it hits the tower. Like maybe a flag pole er summin.
Johnathon - We had a bad ground issue in the past. Since we did not use our gray water, I put ground rods next to the gray line disposal ditch which gave us plenty of moisture for the soil. The septic leach field was also suggested but it was too far from the house.
You need to run #4 copper ground wire to each ground rod in your system to bond all ground rods together. More ground rods do nothing to help you. Adding SPDs definitely helps but your are placing all of nearby lightning strike induced earth current surge gradient stress on SPDs without bonding everything via low resistance ground bond. This is the main flaw in your setup - not bonding all your ground rods. Earth soil acts as distributed resistor and ground rods at different locations act as resistor taps bringing this voltage gradient into your electrical devices. Look up lightning strike ground potential rise.
I actually came here to say exactly this lol. If the rods aren’t bonded, you’re earth ground is not effective. Also, as others have stated, your soil may have a significant impact on the impedance of the grounding (which should be low to facilitate conductivity). You can use chemical grounding products or an appropriate type of soil enhancement product. But first and foremost… bond. Thanks for the good videos 😁
Thanks for talking about this guys! The Midnight SPDs sound like the way to go! Thanks for explaining how to install them. Great idea to protect your generator too! Wow, I had no idea that happened to you guys! That must have been terrible. We had a lightning strike behind our garage. Our Net Gear modem was plugged in at an outlet in the garage and it fried. Wow, adding more grounding support because of your dry sandy soil! So sorry you can't get any insurance for your system. You definitely are doing the most you can to protect your system! Thanks for this video Jonathan! On screen shot, pesky T-Rex at 3:07! Our house uses our water main as the grounding rod. I see a fat copper wire going from our breaker box to the hot water pipe coming out of our water heater. Then more copper wire goes to the cold water pipe as the inlet to the water heater. So we got a new water softening system installed and it is connected in with PVC connections. I asked the guy about the grounding and he didn't know what I was talking about. I had to buy some copper wire and spiked ground connectors to ground above that installation to get over to our water main again. I'm so glad I noticed! He "broke" our grounding system by isolating the water softener system with PVC connectors. PVC doesn't conduct electricity! The side of our house with the breaker box has a deck and then pavement between it and the mast where our power comes into the house. Not really any good spots to put grounding rods. So far so good.
So sorry! What a budget buster!! I am so glad you had the ability to fix it quickly. I accidently ended up on your website, and was quite impressed. You offer so many plans that many people really need. But nobody will understand all the struggles, and learning the hard way you and family have experienced. When we watch your RUclips videos, we put your video on all our devices, including commercials and thumbs up; our way of helping a little.
Most relevant video for me. In the next week, I’m redoing some parts of my system as I move it from temporary to more permanent, if there is such a thing. You are also right about how hard it is to DIY. It is simple to connect component together, but learning everything to deal with problems is difficult and you can never learn enough.
As for ground rods in dry soil or rocky soil, we tend to dig down about four feet and add a 6” diameter plastic pipe to the "well". We drive an eight foot ground rod down in the middle of the pipe, connect a very heavy ground wire and copper strap to the rod and run those to your power system. You can also connect heavy copper ground lines spreading out as radials from the ground rod buried at least two feet u dear ground. Next backfill the ground well with a layer of clay on the bottom if possible followed by some dirt with peat moss for about a foot followed by some gravel. At this point get about two cups of coarse salt and mix with five gallons of water, mix well and pour it into the plastic pipe well. This should help saturate the earth below ground level and create a more conductive path for the lightning strike. If you have a lot of storms hitting during your monsoon season, place a few plastic barrels adjacent to gather rain water. You can use this rain water to drip feed the well to keep it moist. Do not add any additional salt to the system.
excellent post...especially about the extra heavy copper ground wire.. if you're going to do the job get it right. The gauge he installed looked too light...just my opinion i'm not an expert.
I just LOVE your honesty!!!! So very refreshing. Nothing is always perfect and you not only admit it, you also advise us on how to prepare and prevent what’s happened to you!!! Thank you for just being real and kind as always!!!! 💕
Soak a diaper and put it in the ground by your ground rod. Bury with dirt, resoak area after you pound your rod in. A large rock always collects water under it. Just a thought. I love this channel.
A little hint... Not if, but when you build the grounding grid, before you interconnect the rods, measure the resistance between each pair of rods (through the ground, that is)! Do that already between the first two rods. If not satisfactory, add more rods. You might even try water jet drilling with some salt added to the drilling water. Anyway, consider that a lightning strike can be 100,000 amperes , or more. By Ohm's law, it would generate 10,000 V on just a 0.1 ohm grounding resistance. See where this leads you: Even a grounding grid can still be poor, if the soil is dry.
Exactly what needs to be done that's why if you get a strike near but not direct it takes out electronics. Hammering ground rods in where the inverter was, and different spot where the solar panels are just asking for current to flow between those rods creating 1 million volts just arc from the ground rod over to the other wires connecting the panels to the inverter along the way fry the power transistors.
The best Earth ground in that soil would be the well casing . I'm usually grounding for RF and Lightning with good earth I use a minimum of 3 8ft ground rods 12ft apart connected with #4 wire connected with Cadwelds all of it at least 1ft deep .
I completely feel for you. Our house was struck by lightening on Xmas Day 2015. Besides a large hole in our tiled roof, it fried just about every electrical appliance inside the house, and also our Solar Invertor, automatic garage doors, and our back to base security alarm system. It split apart our surge protector power boards as well. Thank goodness we were fully insured, however, the excess was 1000s. This however, was a small price to pay for a bill which was in excess of $40,000 in replacements (covered by the House and Contents Insurance). I hope and pray it does not happen to you again.
DIYing a power supply can give lots of surprises! My first experience included the sun hitting the solar panels, and a power surge shorting out the computer that was connected almost directly to the batteries! Moral to that story: charge the battery, disconnect it from the collectors, THEN and only then plug in the computer. Oh, and actually read the books, and don't trust to a teeny, tiny diode for surge protection. Thanks for this informative video with hands-on demonstration of the protection install.
Hi Jonathan! I design utility-scale solar, wind, and battery energy storage systems as an electrical engineer. We regularly run computational electromagnetic grounding studies to determine ground fault current withstand. A common solution technique involves installing Ground Enhancing Material (GEM) around your horizontal and vertical electrodes to improve the conductivity of the soil when site conditions are less than ideal. This seems to be a nice solution for you, as it appears you are recycling rainwater and trying to save any you can collect! This solution method is more effective from a cost, protection, and safety perspective when analyzed against additional copper. The impedance of your ground system to remote Earth is entirely dependent upon geometric and material properties.
Pretend you are teaching a 10 yr old this method. Ok ready, set, go ! 😊 i as a 45 yr old woman understood abt 000.2 percent of what was explained in the above comment.
I disconnect during a storm. A physical break or disconnect of long cables means it has nowhere to go and cannot damage your gear. Storms are rare round here so it is not much a hardship.
Jonathan, you are the master of all of the electrical things! I’m sorry that happened to you guys, but it’s also awesome that you used a bad situation to teach others how to prevent that as much as possible. Love you all, and have a blessed weekend! ❤
@@mikeanonymous669 please spellcheck when you’re attempting to insult people, or it just makes you look like the idiot. Also, whatever is upsetting you in your life that causes you to take it out on others by being an internet troll, I pray that things get better for you. ❤️
@@TheHavasu_77 If you arent intelligent enough to decipher a typo then that is a YOU problem. You arent qualified to label anyone Master of all electrical things...that in itself proves and backs my claim. "Electrical things". Calling out facts does not make one a troll. You being a fan boy is just sad and pathetic. Go read a book....try an "Electrical things" one. ;)
I would recommend a ground rod next to your airstream's electrical box that you put the SPD on so that it has a short path to discharge instead of having to go all the way back to the ground rods back at your solar shed. I would also make sure that steel structure above your airstream is grounded well as well. It looks like trenching there is not hard, so I would recommend a bare copper wire back to the other ground rods as well, but that doesn't seem as important to getting a ground rod next to the airstream.
@@TinyShinyHome Adding a ground rod at your RV canopy and bonding it to the sub-panel could be problematic. The sub-panel feeding your RV is bonded with a “ground” wire back to the main panel in your solar shed; this is correct and required for your circuit breakers to work properly. The problem is having a second grounding rod at your RV canopy that is bonded to the sub-panel, which is ultimately bonded to the ground rods at your solar shed. The earth has a limit on how much electricity it can absorb in a given location, and your interconnected ground rods give electricity a low resistance path between two earth points. So if lightning strikes near one of your structures, the electricity can travel up into the ground rod at one structure, through your bonded electrical system, and down into the ground rod at the other structure. Connecting multiple ground rods together at your solar shed, with a single link to your main panel, is good and follows NEC guidelines. But having a second ground rod at your RV canopy may actually increase your risk of lighting damage rather than mitigating it. I highly recommend that you look into ground-neutral bonding requirements, and the consequences of having two ground rods at separate locations that are bonded together.
@@NagawieckiFAB NEC requires separate grounding rods at sub panels that are located in detached buildings. The question becomes, does the Airstream count as a separate structure/building? Personally I would treat it as a separate building and have ground rods at both locations. The code to look up would be [250.32(B)]
I know you are probably under NEC rules. In IEC 60364-4-443 you always have to have SPD installed, unless you have shown by risk analysis that thunder is not an issue were you live or in case of being in a residential area and that you equipment is not at a value or below 5x that of the installation of a SPD. In the case of this solar installation, installation of a SPD is a mighty good idea, since inverters and solar are expensive.
It is so great that you both are willing to share your human-ness in an open, unapologetic way! You both are so smart and so creative, and I know the information that you share with us, based on both the successes and the fails that you experience, will help so many people! ❤
Hi there, if you put your lightning rods where your roof rain run off goes into the ground or your water trenches. That should be more moist than most other areas. Just a suggestion.
Guys something to consider is rapping that earth wire around your shed in a trench to stop those voltages coming up through your floor . In the desert conditions we have in Australia I have had to do this in similar buildings and in Africa villagers had to do this ring of protection to stop people getting fried in their buildings . It's more common then you think in dry soils and sandy conditions the voltages that travel can kill. My mate lost his best horse and friends in Africa talked of numbers of people getting killed in the same conditions
Wow! Great info and it was fun seeing the orange dinosaur on the products page scrolling. Also the deer was nice. Thank you all for sharing your lives and experiences.😂
I know you will have a bunch of comments, but something I learned in my telecom days is that when you bring the cable into the house, on the exterior of the house, wrap it 3 times, and cable tie the loop at 3 inch diameter. That is enough inductance to halt a lightening strike. I don't know if it is enough to keep it from damaging electronics, but it is usually enough to keep from burning the house down.
I live in SWFL. I put midnite solar spds at my combiner boxes and at my charge controllers. It may be overkill but lightning scares me to death. When a storm comes and I am home I even shut off my charge controller breakers. The system has been running since 2008 and I haven't lost anything to lightning yet.
@@BrianGaberFishing No pic but easy to explain. The combiner boxes have a conduit punch out on each side and I attached the spd there. There is a bus bar for the negative, positive, and ground in the combiner box. I wired the spd to these busbars.
Excellent video! Thanks for sharing the update/corrections/improvements to your system. If you ever get tired of digging dirt you definitely could hire out as an expert solar design consultant. You, the TSH family home project, has progressed so far over the last three years that I've been following you. Fascinating and inspiring. Stay safe.
high 5 to the homies . i am picturing ashley hiding out in the kitchen, creating some tasty goodies as jonathan goes full nerd 😊. much love to the tiny shiny family .
11:26 We had that issue with our ground rods for our Army communication trucks. A solution is pee on the ground rod once a day. Moisture and conductive salts.
As for a good grounding location perhaps nearer what ever septic or grey water you have would help. Pretty easy to bring grey water any where you want it for cheap. Also seems to me "more" grounding rods is not what you need as you did not burn them off you need "deeper" grounding rods that give a good easy path to earth. As you explained... thank you for sharing. I learned several things.
I did grounding for telephone offices. There were several places where we put soaker hoses on timers around the buildings ground rods to help with the dry conditions. You might wish to place plastic, (a vapor barrier), over your ground roads.
I was thinking almost the same thing. Since they already water their orchard with drip on a timer, I thought they could detour that hose to water the grounding rods, too. I was looking to see if anyone else thought that would work. Thanks!
I use the same midnight on my off grid. One on solar panels, one on AC inverter, one on Battery, one on mini split. Hope for the best when there are radical electrons finding their way to earth ☺️
@@TinyShinyHome Sure, I get your watering limitations, but I don't believe you would need to create a swamp. Just treat the grounding rods as tho they are a couple additional trees on your drip system. Of course, I don't live on your property or within the same parameters. Just a thought.
I'm so glad you didn't get electrocuted when you disconnected/connected the additional ground rods and wires.( people have died disconnecting ground wires from in ground grounding rods)
Well, how about lightning master from FORESPAR? I see them in a lot of electrical boxes like the highway department uses in some location. The government uses similar devices like on DOT weigh stations for their electrical system. I understand what they do when there’s that static electricity in the sky, the plasma it creates around it to make lightning not attracted to it. I have one on my solar frog pond, air diffuser system, and the midnight solar surge detector as well.
Something to consider.. your grounding rods are great.. if that is not enough of a clear path.. add a copper plate or copper sheet to your grounding system.. it provides a much larger surface area that will help disperse the high voltage better..
Sorry to hear about your loss. I worry about something happening to our solar also. We spent a lot on the roof and power walls. I hope the have some good lighting protection.
As to your mounting issue with the Midnite Solar SPD you could use a 90 degree pull box to bring the SPD out from the side of whatever cabinet or box you want to mount to.
control is the greatest illusion of the human experience. After we've done all we can there can still be surprises that we can not predict or prepare for. Thanks for sharing.
A trick I use for mounting MNSPDs is to get a cover plate with a 1/2in trade size knockout on it and stick the MNSPD in that instead of the box. You can get these cover plates for both single gang handy boxes an four square junction boxes. Also, I have DC rated enclosed knife switches on all my PV home runs at the inverters or charge controllers. Any signs of thunderstorms and they all get shut off, which is important when some of my home runs are over 300ft and local ground conductivity means lightning surges go out in the thin layer of conductive dirt and not down into insulating rock.
My dad used knife switches to isolate the inverter, but it still got fried, I think the surge either jumped the gap or (more likely) traveled into the inverter through the neutral or ground wires. So I installed a 30amp plug so the equipment so all conductors could be disconnected and invertor was totally isolated. No more issues with lightning surge frying the inverter, but requires unplugging the system during the storm and playing cards with candle light!
So sorry to hear about this but very interesting. Thank you Jonathan you’re so knowledgeable and it’s nice that you can inform your followers about so many technical aspects of your off grid home. You’re Awesome 👏
One more thing. I know water and the footers for a house does not mix well. However, I suggest you make sure you drain rain water into the ground around one or more of those rods. That helps secure the connectivity between the rods and the sandy ground. You can even buy ground earthing materials to put in a hole around a ground rod for better connectivity. I see issues with this bad earth bonding, when talking about charger for EVs al the time.
I enjoyed watching your video, ime an electrician by trade in Northern Cape South africa we have severe electrical storms every year. What I found is that using earth rods in sandy soil is not always effective because there is not a good bond between the copper earth rod and the sandy soil. Easy and cheap way I improve this bond is to pull out the earth rod and add salt directly in the hole, hit the earth rod in again and add salt around the earth spike, after closed add water to help bond the salt to the sand. I use about 3 killo grams per earth spike, add 1 killo gram of salt on top every 12 months to ensure the earth is effective. Hope this helps
I'm also in the same county. Yes Lightning does what ever it wants out here. After watching this I think I'm getting more protection before the monsoons begin. Last year I actaully saw something to looked like a weak tornado to the south so yes that monsoon season was insane.
Looks like you’ve got it covered! :-) I am wondering if you could prevent the near strike issue by putting down the metal mesh under the long runs. Lay the wiring runs. Then bend the mesh over the wire and ground the mesh at both ends. In theory this would make a bit of a faraday cage around your long runs.
Drilling that hole in the box and seeing the metal filings fall freely down into the conduit along side the wire to live there forever stresses me out! Nice work on vacuuming out the bottom of the box at least. Great video, very educational!
What we have done to our systems because the desert is so dry we installed triple ground rods like recommended for electric fence. I was told by an old timer that it was a cheap way to ensure we have proper grounding.
Hey Jonathan, Just a quick side note: when you're next to your breaker box you just sat down next to what looks like a BBQ. I lived in AZ for 25 years, always a good practice to look under stuff before sitting down or stepping. The rattlesnakes are so perfectly camouflaged. Many times if I didn't look beforehand, it would have been ugly. Just FYI. Like your channel, you're all doing a good job.
Standard grounding for a 200 am ac panel is two ground rods eight feel long six foot separation with #6 wire. Having one ground rod is just not enough for an ac system and now three is stellar. Grounding is so important now days because of the static sensitivity of electronics and harmonics created by them. Top notch grounding is the answer to many problems. Great Job.
In such dry soil, those ground rod connectors should be ok. In my moist soil, it is recommended to weld the copper together with a product called Cadweld. However, I could never get the Cadweld charges to ignite. Tried the recommended flint pistol, lighters, even propane torch. I gave up and will use the connectors in this video.
Good morning again I hope everything is okay hope you're all guys are okay and your house is good or whenever you guys electricity thing is I'll be praying for you guys be careful out there😢
Suggestion for placing a Ground Rod ! Instead of hammering them into the ground, use a spade and dig a circular hole a foot or so in diameter ! Pour water into the hole, then take the pointed end of the ground rod, and push it into the center of the hole, as far as you can ! Then pull the rod most of the way out, and then proceed to push the rod further into the hole, then pull it up again, adding water as you see fit ! Continue with the up and down motion, until you reach the depth you need ! Likely leaving a few inches above the soil ! Shouldn't take but a few minutes, at best ! Once doing this, you'll never beat another one in ! Too, this keeps the end from mushrooming ! Easy Peasy ! Not wanting to overstate the obvious, but always call, " Julie ", before you dig, or installing a Ground rod ! Too, if you strike a rock in the process, you likely will have to move your rod ! Hope this helps ! 👍😉
Jonathan you have done a fabulous job covering the important parts of grounding electrical equipment. I desire to enlighten you and your subscribers to a few useful simple but equally important things to add to a grounding system. Motorola R56 grounding specs seem to be the standard in radio and telephone. Basically it is center point grounding taking all your grounds to one point Then distributing all your ground rods out from that point, This will help keep the protentional (voltage) the same across the system. Plus simple ion static dissipators (metal whiskers that replace lightning rods) Especially where you're located. I just retired from a career of building mountain top microwave radio and telephone repeaters, all solar powered, throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Using R56 standards we were able to reduce damage by lightning by over 95 percent. However as my college professor said the Only thing we really know about lightning; is that it will strike wherever it damn well pleases. All we can do is help it choose the shortest and easiest route to ground.
Thanks, very important infos... we're also off-grid in Cochise and have been unplugging and shutting off systems and computers during storms (in addition to installing safety devices). I'm definitely also looking into those SPDs!
I'm wondering if having ground rods connected to the panels in one ground location and ground rods connected to the victrons in another location contributed to their demise.
Also consider Lightning loops. You will see them on traffic signals. Lightning seeks the easiest path to ground/air. An inductor is a resistance. So are sharp bends in your ground path. Check out marine lightning solutions too. After all the sail boat is the tallest thing around. A lightning rod with a bristle shape will will connect to the air better than your anodized aluminum frame. In Florida this is a real issue.
Looks like a huge shiny lightening antenna..... ;) Such a diversive topic.... Many would say you've created the perfect lightening magnet. But time will tell. Keep us updated. Love your work. Cheers.
Thanks for the info. I'll be building my solar system in the fall and have been wondering how to ground it with the earth so dry. Back in NY my old farm was hit by lightning a couple of times. The lightning rods saved the house but it came back up the phone line and fried a surge protector which saved the computer
One more Idea for you that might help prevent this in the future. you might want to build a lightning arrestor rod on the edge of the property, something like a tall meatal flag pole with a lightning rod on the top to give lightning a much easier way to ground away from your solar setup. If you go this put 8 rods in the ground no closer then 10 feet from each other around the poll to gain the best ground in the area. You will find that lightning would strike that fairly often, so it should protect your setup much better.
Remember with lightning you do not need to have an actual piece of equipment hit . A nearby strike has the effect of a 1 turn transformer between the lightning fork and any part of the installation, the 100 foot wiring section could have an instantaneous rise in voltage exceeding the safe working voltage without actually been hit and thats when the damage occurs. A direct strike is a different matter.
Great video! Lightning hit my ongrid house taking out the panel total damages $2400 ......just below my deductible. Nothing will stop a direct hit. Just be happy whatever it hits does not carch fire and burn down.
Wow, you have become immensely knowledgeable and skilled in solar energy systems. Very impressive. You might want to consider getting one or both levels of PV certification from the North American Board of Energy Practitioners since the demand for it only keeps rising. A possible source of less back breaking income for your family's future. Or maybe one of your children would be interested in this type of career. Cheers from the base of the Trés Hermanas mountains in Luna County New Mexico 🍻
As a ham radio operator, one thing I've learned about lightning is that it's unpredictable. Lightning doesn't only go down, but can also travel sideways and strike in areas that don't have cloud cover. The type of ligtning you have in this video is perfect for te Midnite modules, but If there's ever a direct strike all bets are off. getting all the items in your electricity field to have the same ground potential is important and should be checked with a meter. A zero voltage differential between you and the earths means you look electrically invisible and hhave less chance of drawing the stray voltage to yourself. Some disagree and say floating a ground is the way to go, but I disagree. Informative video and reminded me I need more Midnite SPD's. thanks
I used MOV lightning arrestors for water heater, indoor and outdoor ac systems. These 3 protect the whole system if one breaker is on. They reset when breaker is cycled off then back on. I've had the outdoor ac compressor get a lightning surge and it affected only 1 leg of the 240 v line. Cycling the breaker allows current to flow again.
I Live in Cochise county and got my certificate of occupancy before we were able to get a mailing address ( in a tiny home) and we did do the builder opt out. Took me a phone call and about 3 days to get it. People working for the county were super helpful to me in getting any paperwork done.
You can’t get a certificate of occupancy until you’ve had all your inspections on your completed house. Which means you wouldn’t have opted out (because the opt out means you’re opting out of inspections). Also, you get your mailing address when you file your permit, so I’m not sure how any of the order of what you’re saying makes sense.
@@TinyShinyHome IDK we bought the land and had a shed put on it to make into a tiny home, got the certificate of occupancy, got our mailing address, and the next week our septic and opt-out were approved. finished the tiny home build in about 4 weeks and got insurance on it and the solar. dealing with the county here was super easy fro me. I just asked and they got me the paper work and even helped me fill it out.
@@TinyShinyHome I am finding great inconsistency within the Cochise County Building Department. It's all about who is helping at the counter at the time. The person that got their Certificate of Occupancy out of sequence never should have had it issued without inspections each and every step FIRST.
It would be a lot of work, but if you ran all of your outdoor underground wiring in metal conduit, said conduit to be grounded at both ends with multiple ground rods, that would be additional protection. In addition, to improve the resistivity of your existing ground rods, you could soak the area (a two or three foot circle) around your existing ground rods with either a couple of pounds of copper sulfate or magnesium sulfate and water..... I use lighting protectors on each panel and subpanel by putting in a two-pole breaker (just to protect both phases) and wiring the protection to both poles. I use leviton 51120-1, but there are lots of other good choices - siemans, etc.....and yes, they are one-time use devices, if the lights are out or they turned red or something like that, they protected your panel. In addition you can buy individual surge protectors for sensitive equipment - computers, etc. For those I use Tripplite.....like the Isobar AV2FP. Of course in the end, you can only do what you can do.....and so a little luck is also part of the equation...... And one more important point. Lighting can show up on any or all of our conductors (assuming you have 240v) a ligjting strike can hit either phase, the neutral or your ground conductor. so you want all of the conductors to be protected before the lightning comes into your equipment.
If you are off grip far from firs and emergency services, it makes sense it install a lightning deflector/arrestor system, that is literally WELL grounded surrounding your HOME whether or not you have electronics. These were commonplace on prairie farm houses. If it were me, all cables, power and control, in walls and underground would also be metal conduit, and I'd supplement or replace GFCIs with AFCIs.
While adding additional grounding rods is a good idea, if your soil is dry, it means you still have rods in dry soil. You may have needed to join a ground rod to the first one and drive it deeper ... they do make couplers for ground rods. Sometimes you need 3 or more rods to get deep enough. Yes, they are hard to drive that way, but it should get your rods down into soil with moisture for better results.
Funny, I was just watching your last video, and when I saw the grounding, I immediately said it. The surface area and length are too low. My family had poor grounding, and I felt it once our boiler had short and zapped me in the shower. That's when I started learning and paying attention to grounding and how it can save life as well as material stuff.
*MAKE SURE TO WATCH THE ORIGINAL INSTALL VIDEO:* ruclips.net/video/vnjMQLhp6LE/видео.html
⚡SOLAR WIRING DIAGRAM: tinyshinyhome.com/off-grid-solar-wiring-diagram
Tip for those drilling into metal, use a magnet and cloth to catch the metal fragments so they don't end up some place you don't want them (9:36).
Also with the long runs, should add additional grounding rods at each different building location (13:45).
@@SurenCao I disagree. grounding the panels turns it into a lightning rod
@@SurenCao e
Another important thing you can add is a ionic dissipatior (also called lightning dissipator). This is very important to avoid being hit. This guy explained very well the whole thing. Cheers. ruclips.net/video/PurMG7KHdW4/видео.html
I used to work with a geophysicist who spent a lot of time in the desert. His answer for lightning protection was to encircle the property with wire fence and ground that to another length of fence that was buried horizontally a foot deep. The lightning would preferentially hit the wire fence. He said it suffered several strikes and did the job.
Hey Jonathan. I was an engineer that installed communication towers and have also installed some 10kw solar systems. I will give you a suggestion. It looks like the soil is rather soft there. Multiple ground rods can help but your resistance to the earth may still be rather high. It could still be 40 - 80 ohms and you need it close to or under 5 ohms. The easiest way to achieve this is go deep.. you can get ground rod couplers. Drive a rod in, couple it and drive another down on top of it. You can go down until you hit rock. 3 or 4 rods deep is ideal to really drop that grounding resistance. Of course you need to use an sds type heavy hammer drill with ground rod bit to keep driving deeper. You need steady force. If everything is bonded together you probably only need one deep ground on the entire system. Great video!
I agree, I worked for a telecommunications company and proper grounding was critical to protect our systems. In some of our cities we had ground rods that were much larger than you used at a premium price, our goals were to try to get under 3 ohms to ground measurements.
Yup. What those guys said. Be advised your choice of material matters because they begin to corrode as soon as you put them in the ground. A properly sized, high quality rod can be effective for 40 years. Cheap-o rods are usually effective for 15 years.
Another method that can get you much lower impedances is to increase the soil contact with secondary materials.
Bend the top 12" of multiple ground rods up in at 90 degrees. Lay them into the bottom of a trench and cover the horizontal portions of the rod with a bentonite clay slurry before back filling.
The bentonite will never dry out and it increases the ground rods' surface area contact by a very large percentage.
When people talk about getting the resistance of a grounding electrode or field "below 5 ohms" they aren't talking about any test you can do with a multimeter. These measurements require specialty instruments that can do what is called a three point fall of potential test.
@chrisw2995 you are correct! Bentonite slurry fill around a deep ground rod would be great especially if a hole was bored 40 to 60 feet deep to get that ground resistance down below 5 ohms. It started getting costly though. Great comment.
With lightning the rise-time is fast as lightning and makes all conductors operate as proper ersonators in the RF region.
I's where the real magic happens 😄
ANYONE who thinks they want to live off the grid needs to watch your videos. You share your wins & loses and educate everyone on what worked (or didn't) , why & what happened , and how you fixed it. Even if the only thing someone wants to do is raise chickens (much more involved than city folk think) they should watch your stuff. People don't really understand how much work and knowledge is involved in this lifestyle, then add to it that you are living out West in the high desert...you guys have my respect and admiration. Thank you for sharing your life with us :-)
Amen!
I put my panels back inside, if there is stormy weather, lucky I have mine on ground level.
*losses
If you have a well with a steel well casing you could ground to that too. Or just put up a lightning rod tower so it hits the tower. Like maybe a flag pole er summin.
I love your humility. Making a mistake and asking “What can we learn from this?” is exactly the attitude I want my kids to learn.
Amen!
Johnathon - We had a bad ground issue in the past. Since we did not use our gray water, I put ground rods next to the gray line disposal ditch which gave us plenty of moisture for the soil. The septic leach field was also suggested but it was too far from the house.
yes darlinks,, try peeing on the earth rod also
@@margarita8442that really wasn't even funny.
I was thinking something like having some sort of pond or for the ground rods but your idea is great!
go deep with earth rods and throw pool salt also
@@margarita8442are you trying to make a battery or just corrode the copper?
You need to run #4 copper ground wire to each ground rod in your system to bond all ground rods together. More ground rods do nothing to help you. Adding SPDs definitely helps but your are placing all of nearby lightning strike induced earth current surge gradient stress on SPDs without bonding everything via low resistance ground bond. This is the main flaw in your setup - not bonding all your ground rods. Earth soil acts as distributed resistor and ground rods at different locations act as resistor taps bringing this voltage gradient into your electrical devices. Look up lightning strike ground potential rise.
I actually came here to say exactly this lol. If the rods aren’t bonded, you’re earth ground is not effective. Also, as others have stated, your soil may have a significant impact on the impedance of the grounding (which should be low to facilitate conductivity). You can use chemical grounding products or an appropriate type of soil enhancement product. But first and foremost… bond. Thanks for the good videos 😁
Thank you for sharing your experience and this valuable information. I've just added an MS SPD to my shopping list.
Thanks for talking about this guys! The Midnight SPDs sound like the way to go! Thanks for explaining how to install them. Great idea to protect your generator too! Wow, I had no idea that happened to you guys! That must have been terrible. We had a lightning strike behind our garage. Our Net Gear modem was plugged in at an outlet in the garage and it fried. Wow, adding more grounding support because of your dry sandy soil! So sorry you can't get any insurance for your system. You definitely are doing the most you can to protect your system! Thanks for this video Jonathan! On screen shot, pesky T-Rex at 3:07! Our house uses our water main as the grounding rod. I see a fat copper wire going from our breaker box to the hot water pipe coming out of our water heater. Then more copper wire goes to the cold water pipe as the inlet to the water heater. So we got a new water softening system installed and it is connected in with PVC connections. I asked the guy about the grounding and he didn't know what I was talking about. I had to buy some copper wire and spiked ground connectors to ground above that installation to get over to our water main again. I'm so glad I noticed! He "broke" our grounding system by isolating the water softener system with PVC connectors. PVC doesn't conduct electricity! The side of our house with the breaker box has a deck and then pavement between it and the mast where our power comes into the house. Not really any good spots to put grounding rods. So far so good.
Good comment
If I every get around to building a nice off grid cabin I'll learn from this and install and lightning rod.
So sorry! What a budget buster!! I am so glad you had the ability to fix it quickly. I accidently ended up on your website, and was quite impressed. You offer so many plans that many people really need. But nobody will understand all the struggles, and learning the hard way you and family have experienced. When we watch your RUclips videos, we put your video on all our devices, including commercials and thumbs up; our way of helping a little.
Most relevant video for me. In the next week, I’m redoing some parts of my system as I move it from temporary to more permanent, if there is such a thing. You are also right about how hard it is to DIY. It is simple to connect component together, but learning everything to deal with problems is difficult and you can never learn enough.
As for ground rods in dry soil or rocky soil, we tend to dig down about four feet and add a 6” diameter plastic pipe to the "well". We drive an eight foot ground rod down in the middle of the pipe, connect a very heavy ground wire and copper strap to the rod and run those to your power system. You can also connect heavy copper ground lines spreading out as radials from the ground rod buried at least two feet u dear ground. Next backfill the ground well with a layer of clay on the bottom if possible followed by some dirt with peat moss for about a foot followed by some gravel. At this point get about two cups of coarse salt and mix with five gallons of water, mix well and pour it into the plastic pipe well. This should help saturate the earth below ground level and create a more conductive path for the lightning strike. If you have a lot of storms hitting during your monsoon season, place a few plastic barrels adjacent to gather rain water. You can use this rain water to drip feed the well to keep it moist. Do not add any additional salt to the system.
excellent post...especially about the extra heavy copper ground wire.. if you're going to do the job get it right. The gauge he installed looked too light...just my opinion i'm not an expert.
I just LOVE your honesty!!!! So very refreshing. Nothing is always perfect and you not only admit it, you also advise us on how to prepare and prevent what’s happened to you!!! Thank you for just being real and kind as always!!!! 💕
ouu. sorry for you. i much appreciate your update.
giving away the own learning-curve.
thanks a lot
I appreciate you sharing the information, as more and more of us make solar a part of our energy life.
Soak a diaper and put it in the ground by your ground rod. Bury with dirt, resoak area after you pound your rod in. A large rock always collects water under it. Just a thought. I love this channel.
No we’re not putting a wet diaper next to the ground rod.
A little hint... Not if, but when you build the grounding grid, before you interconnect the rods, measure the resistance between each pair of rods (through the ground, that is)! Do that already between the first two rods. If not satisfactory, add more rods. You might even try water jet drilling with some salt added to the drilling water. Anyway, consider that a lightning strike can be 100,000 amperes , or more. By Ohm's law, it would generate 10,000 V on just a 0.1 ohm grounding resistance. See where this leads you: Even a grounding grid can still be poor, if the soil is dry.
Exzactly, that is very poor grounding grid
Exactly what needs to be done that's why if you get a strike near but not direct it takes out electronics. Hammering ground rods in where the inverter was, and different spot where the solar panels are just asking for current to flow between those rods creating 1 million volts just arc from the ground rod over to the other wires connecting the panels to the inverter along the way fry the power transistors.
The best Earth ground in that soil would be the well casing . I'm usually grounding for RF and Lightning with good earth I use a minimum of 3 8ft ground rods 12ft apart connected with #4 wire connected with Cadwelds all of it at least 1ft deep .
I completely feel for you. Our house was struck by lightening on Xmas Day 2015. Besides a large hole in our tiled roof, it fried just about every electrical appliance inside the house, and also our Solar Invertor, automatic garage doors, and our back to base security alarm system. It split apart our surge protector power boards as well. Thank goodness we were fully insured, however, the excess was 1000s. This however, was a small price to pay for a bill which was in excess of $40,000 in replacements (covered by the House and Contents Insurance). I hope and pray it does not happen to you again.
I am so sorry that happened to you, especially on Christmas... wtf!
So happy you were insured.
DIYing a power supply can give lots of surprises! My first experience included the sun hitting the solar panels, and a power surge shorting out the computer that was connected almost directly to the batteries! Moral to that story: charge the battery, disconnect it from the collectors, THEN and only then plug in the computer. Oh, and actually read the books, and don't trust to a teeny, tiny diode for surge protection. Thanks for this informative video with hands-on demonstration of the protection install.
Really impressed by your solar system. I really need to mimic it to cut my tie to the grid. All of your points are awesome.
Humble acceptance and strong correction to move forward with grace. Helpful to many of us. Thanks!
First time viewing your channel. Pretty awesome thank you for sharing 😊.
Anyone who has lost a refrigerator, a computer, or other tech due to lightning feels your pain.
Or from solar power on the grid going down😊
FACTS
Kinda the equivalent of a car to most households, not so much like losing a phone. He’s got at least 35k in this setup.
They lost a charge controller and inverter not the whole system so yeah no different to loosing and appliance
I turn off my appliances during bad storms. No need to lose my white goods and tv again even power box if worried. 1 switch whole house disconnected.
Hi Jonathan! I design utility-scale solar, wind, and battery energy storage systems as an electrical engineer. We regularly run computational electromagnetic grounding studies to determine ground fault current withstand. A common solution technique involves installing Ground Enhancing Material (GEM) around your horizontal and vertical electrodes to improve the conductivity of the soil when site conditions are less than ideal. This seems to be a nice solution for you, as it appears you are recycling rainwater and trying to save any you can collect! This solution method is more effective from a cost, protection, and safety perspective when analyzed against additional copper. The impedance of your ground system to remote Earth is entirely dependent upon geometric and material properties.
Please talk English please.😄
@@lukefarmer5391google search Ground Enhancement Material see a picture of it.
Where can I learn more about this method?
Ohh, The Engineering is Strong w/ this one.
Pretend you are teaching a 10 yr old this method. Ok ready, set, go ! 😊 i as a 45 yr old woman understood abt 000.2 percent of what was explained in the above comment.
Triumph over adversity! Good work, J.
I disconnect during a storm. A physical break or disconnect of long cables means it has nowhere to go and cannot damage your gear. Storms are rare round here so it is not much a hardship.
Jonathan, you are the master of all of the electrical things! I’m sorry that happened to you guys, but it’s also awesome that you used a bad situation to teach others how to prevent that as much as possible. Love you all, and have a blessed weekend! ❤
So true, thank you!😊
"Masters of all the electrical things" dont get 1000's of $$$ of their equipment wiped out from lightning because of improver lightning protection.
@@mikeanonymous669 please spellcheck when you’re attempting to insult people, or it just makes you look like the idiot. Also, whatever is upsetting you in your life that causes you to take it out on others by being an internet troll, I pray that things get better for you. ❤️
@@TheHavasu_77 If you arent intelligent enough to decipher a typo then that is a YOU problem. You arent qualified to label anyone Master of all electrical things...that in itself proves and backs my claim. "Electrical things". Calling out facts does not make one a troll. You being a fan boy is just sad and pathetic. Go read a book....try an "Electrical things" one. ;)
Excellent comment. I just found this channel I'm glad I found it
I would recommend a ground rod next to your airstream's electrical box that you put the SPD on so that it has a short path to discharge instead of having to go all the way back to the ground rods back at your solar shed. I would also make sure that steel structure above your airstream is grounded well as well. It looks like trenching there is not hard, so I would recommend a bare copper wire back to the other ground rods as well, but that doesn't seem as important to getting a ground rod next to the airstream.
Yes there’s a ground rod there. That’s what the SPD is attached to.
@@TinyShinyHome Adding a ground rod at your RV canopy and bonding it to the sub-panel could be problematic.
The sub-panel feeding your RV is bonded with a “ground” wire back to the main panel in your solar shed; this is correct and required for your circuit breakers to work properly. The problem is having a second grounding rod at your RV canopy that is bonded to the sub-panel, which is ultimately bonded to the ground rods at your solar shed.
The earth has a limit on how much electricity it can absorb in a given location, and your interconnected ground rods give electricity a low resistance path between two earth points. So if lightning strikes near one of your structures, the electricity can travel up into the ground rod at one structure, through your bonded electrical system, and down into the ground rod at the other structure.
Connecting multiple ground rods together at your solar shed, with a single link to your main panel, is good and follows NEC guidelines. But having a second ground rod at your RV canopy may actually increase your risk of lighting damage rather than mitigating it.
I highly recommend that you look into ground-neutral bonding requirements, and the consequences of having two ground rods at separate locations that are bonded together.
@@NagawieckiFAB NEC requires separate grounding rods at sub panels that are located in detached buildings. The question becomes, does the Airstream count as a separate structure/building? Personally I would treat it as a separate building and have ground rods at both locations. The code to look up would be [250.32(B)]
I know you are probably under NEC rules. In IEC 60364-4-443 you always have to have SPD installed, unless you have shown by risk analysis that thunder is not an issue were you live or in case of being in a residential area and that you equipment is not at a value or below 5x that of the installation of a SPD.
In the case of this solar installation, installation of a SPD is a mighty good idea, since inverters and solar are expensive.
It is so great that you both are willing to share your human-ness in an open, unapologetic way! You both are so smart and so creative, and I know the information that you share with us, based on both the successes and the fails that you experience, will help so many people! ❤
Hi there, if you put your lightning rods where your roof rain run off goes into the ground or your water trenches. That should be more moist than most other areas. Just a suggestion.
They collect the water off each of these roofs.
Guys something to consider is rapping that earth wire around your shed in a trench to stop those voltages coming up through your floor . In the desert conditions we have in Australia I have had to do this in similar buildings and in Africa villagers had to do this ring of protection to stop people getting fried in their buildings . It's more common then you think in dry soils and sandy conditions the voltages that travel can kill. My mate lost his best horse and friends in Africa talked of numbers of people getting killed in the same conditions
Wow! Great info and it was fun seeing the orange dinosaur on the products page scrolling. Also the deer was nice. Thank you all for sharing your lives and experiences.😂
Well that will run your ice-cream, have a better week and count your blessings amen.
I know you will have a bunch of comments, but something I learned in my telecom days is that when you bring the cable into the house, on the exterior of the house, wrap it 3 times, and cable tie the loop at 3 inch diameter. That is enough inductance to halt a lightening strike. I don't know if it is enough to keep it from damaging electronics, but it is usually enough to keep from burning the house down.
such a good install !! victron !!!
Buried Cement can be an excellent Ground Source. Especially in desert areas. Google for the requirements.
I live in SWFL. I put midnite solar spds at my combiner boxes and at my charge controllers. It may be overkill but lightning scares me to death. When a storm comes and I am home I even shut off my charge controller breakers. The system has been running since 2008 and I haven't lost anything to lightning yet.
Do you happen to have a photo of how you wired the SPDS to the combiner box?
@@BrianGaberFishing No pic but easy to explain. The combiner boxes have a conduit punch out on each side and I attached the spd there. There is a bus bar for the negative, positive, and ground in the combiner box. I wired the spd to these busbars.
@trkarl thanks!
Excellent video! Thanks for sharing the update/corrections/improvements to your system. If you ever get tired of digging dirt you definitely could hire out as an expert solar design consultant. You, the TSH family home project, has progressed so far over the last three years that I've been following you. Fascinating and inspiring. Stay safe.
Jonathan, you are very knowledgeable about solar energy. Lightening is no joke. I'm glad it was something you could fix.
high 5 to the homies . i am picturing ashley hiding out in the kitchen, creating some tasty goodies as jonathan goes full nerd 😊. much love to the tiny shiny family .
So sorry you had to endure this. Hoping others can learn how, Thank You.
You should always have extra SPD's available.
YAAAAY NERD VIDEO. LOVING IT
Your positivity remains an inspiration!!!! ❤
11:26 We had that issue with our ground rods for our Army communication trucks. A solution is pee on the ground rod once a day. Moisture and conductive salts.
Thank you for saying there only so much you can do for lighting strikes. It very hard impossible to guess when lighting strikes arch across what ever
As for a good grounding location perhaps nearer what ever septic or grey water you have would help. Pretty easy to bring grey water any where you want it for cheap.
Also seems to me "more" grounding rods is not what you need as you did not burn them off you need "deeper" grounding rods that give a good easy path to earth. As you explained...
thank you for sharing. I learned several things.
3:07!!! Glad to see it back.🤪
I did grounding for telephone offices. There were several places where we put soaker hoses on timers around the buildings ground rods to help with the dry conditions. You might wish to place plastic, (a vapor barrier), over your ground roads.
I was thinking almost the same thing. Since they already water their orchard with drip on a timer, I thought they could detour that hose to water the grounding rods, too. I was looking to see if anyone else thought that would work. Thanks!
This is great if you have excess water to just soak in the ground :)
I use the same midnight on my off grid. One on solar panels, one on AC inverter, one on Battery, one on mini split. Hope for the best when there are radical electrons finding their way to earth ☺️
Luckily most of these storms over here happen during the monsoon season and the ground is usually quite saturated...
@@TinyShinyHome Sure, I get your watering limitations, but I don't believe you would need to create a swamp. Just treat the grounding rods as tho they are a couple additional trees on your drip system. Of course, I don't live on your property or within the same parameters. Just a thought.
I'm so glad you didn't get electrocuted when you disconnected/connected the additional ground rods and wires.( people have died disconnecting ground wires from in ground grounding rods)
If someone died from this touching a ground rod something’s not installed right.
Thanks
You have a great positive attitude in the face of adversity and setbacks. 👍
Well, how about lightning master from FORESPAR? I see them in a lot of electrical boxes like the highway department uses in some location. The government uses similar devices like on DOT weigh stations for their electrical system. I understand what they do when there’s that static electricity in the sky, the plasma it creates around it to make lightning not attracted to it. I have one on my solar frog pond, air diffuser system, and the midnight solar surge detector as well.
Never heard of them, but seems like they're made to deter direct lighting strikes which is cool.
Something to consider.. your grounding rods are great.. if that is not enough of a clear path.. add a copper plate or copper sheet to your grounding system.. it provides a much larger surface area that will help disperse the high voltage better..
I second this. Ground bars are the way to go. It’s also easier to upsize your grounding wire to a centrally located ground bar.
he has a grounding loop with two sets of rods in different locations. That is probably what killed his equipment in the first place.
Sorry to hear about your loss. I worry about something happening to our solar also. We spent a lot on the roof and power walls. I hope the have some good lighting protection.
They won't have anything built in - you'll definitely want to add your own protection before/after whatever equipment you want to protect.
Thanks for this tutorial on energy. Love the journey you share 💞 🌩️🌞🙏
As to your mounting issue with the Midnite Solar SPD you could use a 90 degree pull box to bring the SPD out from the side of whatever cabinet or box you want to mount to.
control is the greatest illusion of the human experience. After we've done all we can there can still be surprises that we can not predict or prepare for. Thanks for sharing.
good choice with midnite solar arrestors. they work very well. Those go on every install I do.
A trick I use for mounting MNSPDs is to get a cover plate with a 1/2in trade size knockout on it and stick the MNSPD in that instead of the box. You can get these cover plates for both single gang handy boxes an four square junction boxes.
Also, I have DC rated enclosed knife switches on all my PV home runs at the inverters or charge controllers. Any signs of thunderstorms and they all get shut off, which is important when some of my home runs are over 300ft and local ground conductivity means lightning surges go out in the thin layer of conductive dirt and not down into insulating rock.
Great info - couldn't ever find a cover plate with a knockout here in our little local hardware stores. Probably need to get one online.
@@TinyShinyHome Home Depot and Lowes should have them.
Yah that’s like a 1.5 hour drive for me 😂
My dad used knife switches to isolate the inverter, but it still got fried, I think the surge either jumped the gap or (more likely) traveled into the inverter through the neutral or ground wires. So I installed a 30amp plug so the equipment so all conductors could be disconnected and invertor was totally isolated. No more issues with lightning surge frying the inverter, but requires unplugging the system during the storm and playing cards with candle light!
So sorry to hear about this but very interesting. Thank you Jonathan you’re so knowledgeable and it’s nice that you can inform your followers about so many technical aspects of your off grid home. You’re Awesome 👏
One more thing. I know water and the footers for a house does not mix well. However, I suggest you make sure you drain rain water into the ground around one or more of those rods. That helps secure the connectivity between the rods and the sandy ground.
You can even buy ground earthing materials to put in a hole around a ground rod for better connectivity.
I see issues with this bad earth bonding, when talking about charger for EVs al the time.
I enjoyed watching your video, ime an electrician by trade in Northern Cape South africa we have severe electrical storms every year. What I found is that using earth rods in sandy soil is not always effective because there is not a good bond between the copper earth rod and the sandy soil. Easy and cheap way I improve this bond is to pull out the earth rod and add salt directly in the hole, hit the earth rod in again and add salt around the earth spike, after closed add water to help bond the salt to the sand. I use about 3 killo grams per earth spike, add 1 killo gram of salt on top every 12 months to ensure the earth is effective. Hope this helps
I'm also in the same county. Yes Lightning does what ever it wants out here. After watching this I think I'm getting more protection before the monsoons begin. Last year I actaully saw something to looked like a weak tornado to the south so yes that monsoon season was insane.
Good job on the earthing Jonathon. I hope that the SPD's do the job for you. Good luck.
Looks like you’ve got it covered! :-) I am wondering if you could prevent the near strike issue by putting down the metal mesh under the long runs. Lay the wiring runs. Then bend the mesh over the wire and ground the mesh at both ends. In theory this would make a bit of a faraday cage around your long runs.
Drilling that hole in the box and seeing the metal filings fall freely down into the conduit along side the wire to live there forever stresses me out! Nice work on vacuuming out the bottom of the box at least. Great video, very educational!
Great video. Clear, informative and direct expñaination with a minimum of music and irrelevant stuff.
Had to do a Ufer ground where I live because of location. Good luck. Very informative. Ordering some of those midnite SPD. Cheers from the Caribbean
What we have done to our systems because the desert is so dry we installed triple ground rods like recommended for electric fence. I was told by an old timer that it was a cheap way to ensure we have proper grounding.
Hey Jonathan,
Just a quick side note: when you're next to your breaker box you just sat down next to what looks like a BBQ. I lived in AZ for 25 years, always a good practice to look under stuff before sitting down or stepping. The rattlesnakes are so perfectly camouflaged. Many times if I didn't look beforehand, it would have been ugly. Just FYI. Like your channel, you're all doing a good job.
Standard grounding for a 200 am ac panel is two ground rods eight feel long six foot separation with #6 wire. Having one ground rod is just not enough for an ac system and now three is stellar. Grounding is so important now days because of the static sensitivity of electronics and harmonics created by them. Top notch grounding is the answer to many problems. Great Job.
At least you learned a lot!!! Great job!
I didn’t understand a word you said but I sure wish I did. I’m glad your able to hopefully keep it from happening again.
yea.. i had to stop and mull over, look at the undertitel and than go on. jonatan is unusually fast speaking. well.. lots of content.
Thanks for the info. Now I need to add these to my system!
you learned the hard hard way. Grounding surface area is the name of the game
In such dry soil, those ground rod connectors should be ok. In my moist soil, it is recommended to weld the copper together with a product called Cadweld. However, I could never get the Cadweld charges to ignite. Tried the recommended flint pistol, lighters, even propane torch. I gave up and will use the connectors in this video.
Good morning again I hope everything is okay hope you're all guys are okay and your house is good or whenever you guys electricity thing is I'll be praying for you guys be careful out there😢
Suggestion for placing a Ground Rod !
Instead of hammering them into the ground, use a spade and dig a circular hole a foot or so in diameter !
Pour water into the hole, then take the pointed end of the ground rod, and push it into the center of the hole, as far as you can !
Then pull the rod most of the way out, and then proceed to push the rod further into the hole, then pull it up again, adding water as you see fit !
Continue with the up and down motion, until you reach the depth you need !
Likely leaving a few inches above the soil !
Shouldn't take but a few minutes, at best !
Once doing this, you'll never beat another one in !
Too, this keeps the end from mushrooming !
Easy Peasy !
Not wanting to overstate the obvious, but always call,
" Julie ", before you dig, or installing a Ground rod !
Too, if you strike a rock in the process, you likely will have to move your rod !
Hope this helps !
👍😉
Jonathan you have done a fabulous job covering the important parts of grounding electrical equipment. I desire to enlighten you and your subscribers to a few useful simple but equally important things to add to a grounding system. Motorola R56 grounding specs seem to be the standard in radio and telephone. Basically it is center point grounding taking all your grounds to one point Then distributing all your ground rods out from that point, This will help keep the protentional (voltage) the same across the system. Plus simple ion static dissipators (metal whiskers that replace lightning rods) Especially where you're located. I just retired from a career of building mountain top microwave radio and telephone repeaters, all solar powered, throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Using R56 standards we were able to reduce damage by lightning by over 95 percent. However as my college professor said the Only thing we really know about lightning; is that it will strike wherever it damn well pleases. All we can do is help it choose the shortest and easiest route to ground.
Thanks, very important infos... we're also off-grid in Cochise and have been unplugging and shutting off systems and computers during storms (in addition to installing safety devices). I'm definitely also looking into those SPDs!
I'm wondering if having ground rods connected to the panels in one ground location and ground rods connected to the victrons in another location contributed to their demise.
🤔
Also consider Lightning loops. You will see them on traffic signals. Lightning seeks the easiest path to ground/air. An inductor is a resistance. So are sharp bends in your ground path. Check out marine lightning solutions too. After all the sail boat is the tallest thing around. A lightning rod with a bristle shape will will connect to the air better than your anodized aluminum frame. In Florida this is a real issue.
Looks like a huge shiny lightening antenna..... ;) Such a diversive topic.... Many would say you've created the perfect lightening magnet. But time will tell. Keep us updated. Love your work. Cheers.
What looks like a huge shiny lightning antenna?
Thanks for the info. I'll be building my solar system in the fall and have been wondering how to ground it with the earth so dry.
Back in NY my old farm was hit by lightning a couple of times. The lightning rods saved the house but it came back up the phone line and fried a surge protector which saved the computer
One more Idea for you that might help prevent this in the future. you might want to build a lightning arrestor rod on the edge of the property, something like a tall meatal flag pole with a lightning rod on the top to give lightning a much easier way to ground away from your solar setup. If you go this put 8 rods in the ground no closer then 10 feet from each other around the poll to gain the best ground in the area. You will find that lightning would strike that fairly often, so it should protect your setup much better.
Remember with lightning you do not need to have an actual piece of equipment hit .
A nearby strike has the effect of a 1 turn transformer between the lightning fork and any part of the installation, the 100 foot wiring section could have an instantaneous rise in voltage exceeding the safe working voltage without actually been hit and thats when the damage occurs.
A direct strike is a different matter.
That’s the whole point of this video - indirect strikes.
Great video! Lightning hit my ongrid house taking out the panel total damages $2400 ......just below my deductible. Nothing will stop a direct hit. Just be happy whatever it hits does not carch fire and burn down.
I understand “EMP SHIELD “ would work really well in this set up as well , great video tho thank you for sharing !
Wow, you have become immensely knowledgeable and skilled in solar energy systems. Very impressive. You might want to consider getting one or both levels of PV certification from the North American Board of Energy Practitioners since the demand for it only keeps rising. A possible source of less back breaking income for your family's future. Or maybe one of your children would be interested in this type of career. Cheers from the base of the Trés Hermanas mountains in Luna County New Mexico 🍻
As a ham radio operator, one thing I've learned about lightning is that it's unpredictable. Lightning doesn't only go down, but can also travel sideways and strike in areas that don't have cloud cover. The type of ligtning you have in this video is perfect for te Midnite modules, but If there's ever a direct strike all bets are off. getting all the items in your electricity field to have the same ground potential is important and should be checked with a meter. A zero voltage differential between you and the earths means you look electrically invisible and hhave less chance of drawing the stray voltage to yourself. Some disagree and say floating a ground is the way to go, but I disagree. Informative video and reminded me I need more Midnite SPD's. thanks
I used MOV lightning arrestors for water heater, indoor and outdoor ac systems. These 3 protect the whole system if one breaker is on. They reset when breaker is cycled off then back on. I've had the outdoor ac compressor get a lightning surge and it affected only 1 leg of the 240 v line. Cycling the breaker allows current to flow again.
I Live in Cochise county and got my certificate of occupancy before we were able to get a mailing address ( in a tiny home) and we did do the builder opt out. Took me a phone call and about 3 days to get it. People working for the county were super helpful to me in getting any paperwork done.
You can’t get a certificate of occupancy until you’ve had all your inspections on your completed house. Which means you wouldn’t have opted out (because the opt out means you’re opting out of inspections). Also, you get your mailing address when you file your permit, so I’m not sure how any of the order of what you’re saying makes sense.
@@TinyShinyHome IDK we bought the land and had a shed put on it to make into a tiny home, got the certificate of occupancy, got our mailing address, and the next week our septic and opt-out were approved. finished the tiny home build in about 4 weeks and got insurance on it and the solar. dealing with the county here was super easy fro me. I just asked and they got me the paper work and even helped me fill it out.
@@TinyShinyHome I am finding great inconsistency within the Cochise County Building Department. It's all about who is helping at the counter at the time. The person that got their Certificate of Occupancy out of sequence never should have had it issued without inspections each and every step FIRST.
Great video ... making me go back and take care of this.
It would be a lot of work, but if you ran all of your outdoor underground wiring in metal conduit, said conduit to be grounded at both ends with multiple ground rods, that would be additional protection.
In addition, to improve the resistivity of your existing ground rods, you could soak the area (a two or three foot circle) around your existing ground rods with either a couple of pounds of copper sulfate or magnesium sulfate and water.....
I use lighting protectors on each panel and subpanel by putting in a two-pole breaker (just to protect both phases) and wiring the protection to both poles. I use leviton 51120-1, but there are lots of other good choices - siemans, etc.....and yes, they are one-time use devices, if the lights are out or they turned red or something like that, they protected your panel.
In addition you can buy individual surge protectors for sensitive equipment - computers, etc. For those I use Tripplite.....like the Isobar AV2FP. Of course in the end, you can only do what you can do.....and so a little luck is also part of the equation......
And one more important point. Lighting can show up on any or all of our conductors (assuming you have 240v) a ligjting strike can hit either phase, the neutral or your ground conductor. so you want all of the conductors to be protected before the lightning comes into your equipment.
I think they have already done all the research for this. Since last summer in fact. So you are too late.
@@bridgwll imagine saying it is too late for new helpful information
@@SuperSpecies they don’t need the information. This was a story that happened months ago. They had already fixed the problem. Get it?
@@bridgwll ah so you think the comments section on youtube is just for the video creator to read. You know others can read it, too?
@@SuperSpecies where did I say that? Don’t put words in my mouth & make it up as you go along.
Love your attitude - great content. Thank you.
If you are off grip far from firs and emergency services, it makes sense it install a lightning deflector/arrestor system, that is literally WELL grounded surrounding your HOME whether or not you have electronics. These were commonplace on prairie farm houses. If it were me, all cables, power and control, in walls and underground would also be metal conduit, and I'd supplement or replace GFCIs with AFCIs.
While adding additional grounding rods is a good idea, if your soil is dry, it means you still have rods in dry soil. You may have needed to join a ground rod to the first one and drive it deeper ... they do make couplers for ground rods. Sometimes you need 3 or more rods to get deep enough. Yes, they are hard to drive that way, but it should get your rods down into soil with moisture for better results.
Funny, I was just watching your last video, and when I saw the grounding, I immediately said it. The surface area and length are too low.
My family had poor grounding, and I felt it once our boiler had short and zapped me in the shower. That's when I started learning and paying attention to grounding and how it can save life as well as material stuff.