ᐅ Is it possible to ground a satellite system using a 7x2.5 mm² cable?

At my grandmother’s house, we installed a satellite dish on the roof. It is not grounded. Installing a new cable would be very difficult. However, there is an unused 7x2.5mm2 power cable available. I could probably use this for grounding and connect it to the masts and the grounding busbar, right? It may not comply with the standards, but it should be better than nothing.

Can anyone help here? Thanks

I’m not an electrician, but does a satellite dish actually need to be grounded? It’s not directly connected to the electrical grid, and the worst that can go wrong is the LNB getting damaged, which only costs a few euros.

Grundaus schrieb:

but does a satellite dish actually need to be grounded

Definitely yes. Otherwise, lightning could enter your house through the TV wiring.

I can't really contribute to the actual question, though. In our case, the satellite dish is grounded via a 16mm² (0.021 sq in) conductor connected to the protective earth. A 7x2.5mm² (7x0.0038 sq in) cable should actually be just as effective. However, a professional might still say "no, because it’s not up to code." You’d probably need to ask a practical installer rather than a strict code enforcer.

The expert on this question here would be @Dipol

AllThumbs schrieb:

Definitely yes. Otherwise, lightning can enter your house through the TV wiring.
However, I cannot really add anything to the main question. In our case, the satellite dish is grounded via the protective conductor with 16mm² (about 5 AWG). A 7x2.5mm² (7x14 AWG) cable should not be any less effective. But a professional might still say "no, because it’s not compliant with standards." You would probably need to ask a hands-on expert rather than a strict standards enforcer.

Making statements like that is dangerous!
Driving slowly into a wall twice doesn’t hurt nearly as much as hitting it fast once.
Conductor resistance, surface area, and so on vary greatly. Then there are interesting effects with surface currents, solid core versus stranded wire, etc. Which material is better or even suitable, I wouldn’t decide based on what “should” be. Standards have a purpose and are usually based on sound scientific principles, especially for physical phenomena that are well understood.

And I would be even less inclined to ask a “hands-on expert” here. After all, I hope no practitioner builds so many houses that they experience a significant number of lightning strikes during their career. The statement “it has always worked so far” is probably just because they never had a strike in any of their installations.