FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

A complete Furse lightning protection system includes air terminals (lightning rods) to intercept strikes, down conductors to safely route current to ground, earthing electrodes to dissipate energy, bonding components to equalize potential, and surge protective devices to protect connected electrical and electronic systems from transient overvoltages.

Lightning protection systems safely conduct direct lightning strikes to ground, protecting building structures. Surge protection devices guard sensitive electronics from voltage transients caused by lightning, switching operations, or grid disturbances. Furse provides both technologies as complementary layers of comprehensive facility protection.

Furse protects diverse applications including commercial buildings, industrial facilities, telecommunications infrastructure, data centers, healthcare facilities, renewable energy installations, transportation systems, and critical infrastructure. Any facility requiring reliable lightning and surge protection benefits from Furse engineering excellence.

Through collation of resistivity measurements and earth analysis, our engineers produce bespoke earthing designs complete with detailed drawings, calculations, and comprehensive reports. Structural lightning protection system designs are included when required, providing turnkey documentation for project approval and installation.

Our engineers use advanced CAD software to create detailed or budgetary earthing electrode and lightning protection system designs compliant with any national or international standard. With 125+ years of design experience, we deliver technical solutions tailored to your project's complexity, ensuring informed decision-making from concept to completion.

The Furse technical team actively contributes to national and harmonized European/international standards development, keeping us at the forefront of industry advancements. Our designs comply with all recognized standards globally, providing the ideal foundation for complex lightning protection projects with long-term compliance assurance.

Yes, you should conduct a risk assessment. The probability of a lightning strike is not based on past history. Buildings can stand for centuries without being struck and then experience a direct hit. For example, York Minster stood for 600 years before being struck by lightning in 1984, causing extensive irreplaceable damage. Remember, a direct strike is not necessary for lightning to cause damage through fire, electric shock, or electronic systems failure.

No, this is unlikely to provide adequate protection. BS EN 62305 requires a full Faraday Cage system comprising multiple conductors on and around the building. A single air finial and down conductor does not meet current standards for comprehensive lightning protection.

You must conduct a formal risk assessment in accordance with BS EN 62305:2006 Part 2. There is no intuitive way to determine this. The risk assessment in BS EN 62305-2 is much more detailed than the assessment in BS 6651 and includes many more parameters. Furse offers StrikeRisk, a bespoke risk assessment software package that simplifies and speeds up this process. A free trial is available.

The risk assessment includes default values that can be used when accurate information is not available. However, these default values are conservative, so you should try to obtain as much accurate information as possible to get the most precise assessment for your building.

Yes, Furse provides free site surveys for surge protection systems on mainland UK. However, please note that we cannot check existing structural lightning protection systems or conduct surveys for new structural lightning protection installations. For those services, you would need to contact a specialist lightning protection installer.

No, a lightning conductor protects the building structure itself but does not protect electronics within it. You need specialist surge protection devices (SPDs) to prevent equipment damage from Lightning Electromagnetic Impulses (LEMP). BS EN 62305 requires coordinated SPDs where the locations and LEMP handling attributes of multiple SPDs work together to nullify conducted LEMP effects and protect equipment within the building.