Furse Total Solution to Earthing & Lightning Protection

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Furse, Wilford Road, Nottingham, NG2 1EB • Tel: +44 (0)115 964 3700 • Email: • Web:
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Introduction Protecting structures & people
The importance of external lightning protection
The function of an external lightning protection
system is to intercept, conduct and disperse a
lightning strike safely to earth.
Without such a system, a building’s structure and
the people, equipment and electrical systems
around or within it, are all at risk.
Lightning strikes, or even electrical discharges resulting
from nearby lightning, can cause damage or injury in
many ways.
Lightning can cause fires, explosions, chemical release
or mechanical disruption within or around a structure.
Step and touch voltages generated from a lightning
strike can cause injury, or even loss of life, to humans
(and animals) in the close vicinity.
Critical services, such as mains power and telecoms etc.,
can be heavily disrupted by lightning strikes, resulting
in major potential losses.
Offices risk physical damage to servers and PCs, as well
as loss of key data; factories risk machinery downtime
and repair costs along with health and safety hazard
to personnel.
Clearly, lightning inflicted damage could have
enormous implications for a company, in terms of
both human and financial cost.
In the worst case scenario, a company might even go
out of business as a result of lightning damage.
Protecting against the potentially severe consequences
of a lightning strike therefore becomes a vital
consideration for many companies, both large and
small, across a wide variety of industries.
However, assessing and implementing an external
lightning protection system can prove a complex
process, and it is here where the Furse approach, our
Total Solution to lightning protection, helps most.
The Furse Total Solution takes account of all the
potential risks from a direct lightning strike, and
incorporates all the elements necessary to deliver full
and effective external lightning protection, including:
Structural lightning protection
Earth termination
Equipotential bonding of metallic parts
By considering these key aspects of external lightning
protection, our Total Solution enables dangerous
lightning energy to be captured and conducted via
above-ground lightning protection components safely
to a low resistance earth termination network.
Equipotential bonding SPDs ensure partial lightning
currents that flow during a direct strike are blocked
from entering a structure via incoming/outgoing
metallic services, and are channelled safely to earth.
Lightning strikes can cause major structural damage to buildings