satellite dish grounding

Lightning protection is never an exact science.

Do you really want to "ground the dish" or do you want to add a lightning rod near it and above it to direct a lightning strike to the ground and away from your dish? Don't worry about hurting dish reception, just mount the rod on the side of the dish.

I'd say add a lighting rod. Why make your electronics a lightning rod and bring the energy into the house?

some interesting lightning rod facts that seemed reasonable.
There's alot of do it yourself lightning rod protection sellers.

Sounds like a resedential DSS type install, is this correct?

If so, and the dish mount is on the 2nd floor balcony not a ground pole mount, I wouldn't worry too much about feeding a grounding conductor to the dish. Judging from the description above, the dish is well below the roof line, and there are lightnoing rods already on the roof.


Typically, the lightning would traavel the least resistive path to ground. The dish would not be in that path.

Just my $0.02 worth.

thanks for the feedback !
It will be an FTA setup - 1.25m dish/4lnb/cascadable
multiswitch/12 outlets. Yes, dish is on 2nd floor (roof is
above 3rd floor).

I did some more digging around a German forum and there I
saw some recommendations which support the idea of not
grounding the dish when it is some 2m below the roof line
and not more than 1.5m outwards from the house walls, so robertjo24, I can buy the idea of not grounding the dish.

Now there's still a few issues I would like your opinions
on, so I can piece everything together:

Here's a list of recommendations for grounding/protection etc. in USA forums (bits and pieces mentioned here and there, but this seems to be the whole picture:

(1)surge protector in the electrical utility box
(2)ground mast/mount
(3)use grounding block OR inline surge protector for coax
outside the building near the dish eg:
(4)use component surge protector near the components eg:

Now, what's interesting is that outside of USA I see
(1)OK
(2)rod next to mast/mount - only rod grounded
(3)grounding blocks are used but they are inside the
building at the equipment and grounding is to the
"earth/ground" pin of the power. Here , there's also one
thing I don't understand - the practice is to ground block
each input and output F connector - why is each tied to the
other (at least when I check my multiswitch with a
multimeter, all output and input F connector grounds are
tied together) - interesting question for me as I have a
heap of inputs and outputs ?


So, if I leave out the dish grounding/lightning rod next to
the dish, I guess I can go for the groundblocks for the
coax inside the building at the equipment ?

In the US, ground blocks would be typical at building entry points for protection, but usually when the dish is mounted away from the building, like on a pole. The pole would be grounded, or bonded to the building ground. The coax would be grounded via a grounding block at the entry point to the building (bonded to the building ground).



If the dish is mounted to the side of the building, well below the roof line, I don't really see a major concern from a surge protection point of view.

If the indoor receiver is well grounded, it wouldn't hurt to add the in-line surge protectors at that point.

Unless you are installing a long run of cable on the exterior of the building, I don't think a grounding block at the point of entry gains you any protection. Particularly since there is no nearby source to properly bond to ground.

Of course these are merely opinions pertaining to protection, and are no based upon knowledge of any local codes you may be subject to.