Many years ago I did an alarm install in a small sports club in pretty much an open field and got a report by staff the a lightning strike had hit the building and "sent the alarm crazy".

It was in the days prior shock sensors on windows or acoustic glass break detectors therefore a lot of the old window foil strips in the system and I was told that all of the foil had glowed.

In fact it was quite a crack I know as a live within a few miles.

Several folks alarms in our  locality (amongst other things) were permanently damaged.

After about half an hour this alarm settled down and gave years of service afterwards.

It was an A & G BS80/1 control panel.

Back in those days alarm systems were transistors/thyrisors rather than ICs threfore fewer and less sensitive components, the only SPD was in the BT socket attached to the autodialler (old 8 track cartridge 999 dialler).

Would a modern control panel have withstood this event?

Doubtfull, although when I Informed A & G (Carters) they were rather surprised too.

Would an SPD have helped? I don`t know.

I knew an installer who had a few systems over the years that had diallers (old tape diallers including 8 track or the common small tape cassettes) gone down and he had a policy of adding his own SPD in addition to the one in the BT master socket, he felt it helped a lot.

My  view is SPDs in control panels/diallers and the like in addition to surge protected sockets and extensions is probably a good idea and cheap enough. I also think an SPD on our incomming mains supply is probably worthwhile too.


Anywy, back to the plot, John I hope we`ve all given you food for thought for your weekend read, it would be interesting to hear what you finally decide on and why. There is quite a lot of choice these days

Many years ago I did an alarm install in a small sports club in pretty much an open field and got a report by staff the a lightning strike had hit the building and "sent the alarm crazy".

It was in the days prior shock sensors on windows or acoustic glass break detectors therefore a lot of the old window foil strips in the system and I was told that all of the foil had glowed.

In fact it was quite a crack I know as a live within a few miles.

Several folks alarms in our  locality (amongst other things) were permanently damaged.

After about half an hour this alarm settled down and gave years of service afterwards.

It was an A & G BS80/1 control panel.

Back in those days alarm systems were transistors/thyrisors rather than ICs threfore fewer and less sensitive components, the only SPD was in the BT socket attached to the autodialler (old 8 track cartridge 999 dialler).

Would a modern control panel have withstood this event?

Doubtfull, although when I Informed A & G (Carters) they were rather surprised too.

Would an SPD have helped? I don`t know.

I knew an installer who had a few systems over the years that had diallers (old tape diallers including 8 track or the common small tape cassettes) gone down and he had a policy of adding his own SPD in addition to the one in the BT master socket, he felt it helped a lot.

My  view is SPDs in control panels/diallers and the like in addition to surge protected sockets and extensions is probably a good idea and cheap enough. I also think an SPD on our incomming mains supply is probably worthwhile too.


Anywy, back to the plot, John I hope we`ve all given you food for thought for your weekend read, it would be interesting to hear what you finally decide on and why. There is quite a lot of choice these days