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Overheard a lead tech say we should skip the bonding jumpers on composite panels
He was talking to a new guy in the break room, said it saves 20 minutes per panel and nobody checks anyway. That can't be right for lightning protection, can it?
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tyler_baker5h ago
Hang on though, how many of these panels actually get hit by lightning? I've been on sites where we skip bonding on interior stuff that's basically decoration and nothing bad ever happened. Not saying it's right, but the risk seems way overblown for something that's stuck on the side of a building. Plus, if the panels are composite, the bonding jumpers are mostly just for show anyway since the material doesn't conduct that well to begin with. I'd rather spend the time making sure the actual lightning rods and cables are solid than messing with little jumper tabs.
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miles_jackson95h ago
Tyler you're saying the composite material doesn't conduct well so why bother with the jumpers at all? That logic sounds dangerous to me. The whole point of those bonding jumpers is to connect the panels together so lightning current can travel to ground without arcing across gaps. If you skip them, you're basically creating a series of isolated metal pieces that could build up a charge differential and flash over to something. What happens when one of those "interior decoration" panels gets hit by a side flash from the main lightning rod system instead of a direct bolt?
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