Lightning is caused on too immense a scale by thunderstorms several miles high and tens of miles wide. Lightning storms’ unpredictability increases the risk to individuals and property. However, a lightning strike’s external damage to property can often times be difficult to determine. Even firefighters often find it hard to determine whether lightning directly hits a house or not, as there can be no physical signs of damage anywhere outside. And all too often when lightning strikes it sets off alarm systems, resulting in corrupted and lost data, and damage to high-tech electronic equipment. The power problems caused by thunderstorms spell out serious operational flaws for the old-fashioned security systems.
When lightning strikes a house directly, it will tend to follow the available paths to the ground, including telephone or cable lines, the electrical wiring, antennas, plumbing, and/or steel framework. The fact that houses and buildings have an abundance of grounding paths make them generally safe lightning shelters. But for alarm technicians the suddenness with which lightning strikes has always been a concern. The damage it can cause may involve a lone device connected to an internal low-voltage cable, like an addressable manual, a fire pull or an individual circuit board. Or it might involve an entire motherboard with a fire or burglar alarm panel. The damage can sometimes be catastrophic–tearing through the system from one end to the other.
Mechanics of a Lightning Strike
Lightning does have the capacity to breach any devices that connect to a metallic wire. A lightning strike can be a direct hit to the cable itself or an indirect hit by virtue of inductance. By direct hit to equipment, lightning can enter through multiple paths from outside the structure. Lightning can also enter a structure through public electricity via outside power lines or through a conventional telephone, cable television networks and satellite dish systems. Lightning generally affects signaling line circuit (SLC) loops (in burglar and fire alarm systems), low-voltage data networks (such as initialing device circuits (IDC’s) and notification appliance circuits (NAC’s), as well as coaxial cables that carry images in a closed circuit television (CCTV).
Lightning can induce a high-voltage current in the internal wiring of a building that can badly damage any alarm system with a second-rate surge suppression common with the traditional security systems. The wireless systems are the ideal types–the best choice for upgrading your existing home security system or installing a completely new one. The installation of a wireless home security is quite easy– there is no need for nails or any drilling to install, cameras can be placed easily, and all components can be easily moved.
Advantages to a Wireless System
Wireless home security systems are becoming increasingly popular, and as technology has advanced the wireless home security systems have become more reliable and cost effective. Faster to install with no complex hard wiring needed and no circuit testing required, perhaps the strongest advantage of wireless home security systems is that they can be monitored from nearly anywhere. While traditional systems are limited by their wires, wireless systems have a much greater range. The cameras in some wireless home security systems can be monitored over a secure internet connection, allowing you to check on your home while across the country or even across the globe or a parent can check from a computer to see if their child has arrived home safely from school while they are still at work.
Safe Touch, the leading independent communications-security company in Jacksonville, has a range of wireless home security systems which have been proven to be a versatile innovation and more so a working guard against lightning strikes. Â With no complex hard wiring needed to install like the old-fashioned type security system which relies on physical wiring (a phone line or broadband connection)–paths lightning generally travels through when it strikes a home or structure–the Safe Touch wireless security system rather operates with the capacity to send out its signals through cellular communication. Because the Safe Touch security system is not wired it does not need a hard line connection via phone or internet. Ironically, phone and internet services can be interrupted when a storm knocks the power out. When that happens the old-fashioned traditional security system is easily breached and becomes defective. The Safe Touch wireless security system is equipped with a 24-hour back-up battery capacity designed to prevent connection interruptions of the wireless security alarm system. Such a wireless security alarm system is more reliable than a wired system and a better guard against lightning strikes you may want to consider for your security system.