Ugh. Lost everything connected to the sat dish.(all 3 TVs.)
Lost the cable modem and my iMac
Lost the dishwasher.
My Roku EXPLODED!

Well shit.

About 5 years ago, I was standing in the garage watching it storm (Garage doors both open). Tree in front of the turn-around explodes in a flash, lights all go out, and water starts spouting out of the driveway.

Strike hit the tree, followed the roots to our water main, and followed something over to our transformer box at the corner of the lot. Local utility has to show up and patch the water main and remove and replace our transformer.

We lost the directv box and one appliance... everything else survived.

Last time I stand and watch a storm from the garage :-)

Sorry to hear about your event.

In "light" of this event..... What does the collective think about whole house surge protectors that go on the breaker box??

Thanks in advance.

Andrew

That Sucks. Our barn got hit a few years back no real damage but our insurance agent said if you are hit once the chances of getting hit again are very strong. With that in mind surge protect everything. Chris

That sucks. Glad to hear the damage was relatively localized. A long time ago, some friends of the family had their house get hit. I guess it wasn't grounded quite well enough (not sure) because the surge scorched some wiring and started a slow smoldering fire in a wall. That's made me itchy about lightning strikes ever since.

Wow! Glad you are ok and sorry about the damage!

I had to get the fire extinguisher to the TV!

About 12 years ago we got hit and I saw the lightning "fingers" wiggle out of the wall sockets.
Then they were just sucked back in.
The lightning exited my watermain and blasted it to pieces too.


Ugh I JUST hd all of the DirectTV boxes replaced last Monday.
My Roku made it 9 days.

quote:

Originally posted by El Cid 92:
Sorry to hear about your event.

In "light" of this event..... What does the collective think about whole house surge protectors that go on the breaker box??

Thanks in advance.

Andrew

They can help in some situations, when lightning or other causes create a spike in the incoming electrical supply, (being on a plant feed that also has large demands that can result in brownouts or spikes, such as near industrial areas) but most events where components are damage are a result of a strike that brings the ingress through a device, typically satellite dish or coax cable, and no so much nowadays, the phone line (POTS).

And when that occurs, the current seeking ground travels along the path of the devices, which act like fusible links, and the box you rent from the power company is useless in such situations.

I design data centers, premise wiring and various equipment/infrastructure systems and the scope of trying to "back engineer" and then apply a proper fix to the issue of lighting strikes to homes is almost impossible.

Best you can do is ensure you have proper amount of grounding for the house. (varies by earth type, number and depth of ground rods).

Then trying to have devices/equipment on same common circuits and proper bonding/grounding.

And realize that the amount of voltage in spikes will exceed even properly design and built (normal/common)systems.

Oh the "surge protectors" did nothing.
They're just fancy extension chords.

wife and I were watching TV on afternoon,
thunderstorm, we thought, had passed just to the east of us, (dark in that direction

it was raining, (we have a double door, curtains open) and the sun was out,
had not heard any thunder in a bit,,


next thing you know the tree that was 25 feet or so out out back door looked like a tall flash bulb,,

big bright flash,, then a loud crack, and the power flickered,

we both jumped straight up of the couch, both said WTF at the same time,

lightening had hit that tree, the bark was stripped off most of it and some was thrown over our house (2 story with walk up attic) into the front yard, ,
..
only thing we had to do was replace the modem on the desktop,, nothing else was hurt

had to have the tree taken down,


years later, I noticed a tree in the corner of our yard was dying,

walked up to it and you could see where lightening had hit, and stripped a line of bark in a twisted pattern down the side of it,

the holly tree, not a foot away, survived,

this tree was about 25yrds from the other

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
Oh the "surge protectors" did nothing.
They're just fancy extension chords.

We were told the same thing 20 years ago when we had a strike. It's a shame they still haven't developed something that works.

Yikes, glad to hear your OK and only lost some "replaceables".

 
Has anyone tried a lightning rod system for their house? It wouldn't be economically feasible here where our storms are isolated and mainly limited to two months a year (perhaps for a business that has a large installation to protect). I just wonder how well a good system costs, and works. I've seen some in KS on barns and houses, a whole series of receptors on the peak of the roof. I don't know what they do with the current beyond that.
 

From what I've read they're pricey and just offer piece of mind.
They won's stop an EMP surge.
I'm gonna look the place over for the strike itself.
The first one got a chain link fence post and entered the house through the breaker box.

Oh my deductible. Over $4000.
I'll be eating this one.

If you got hit once you'll probably get hit again, I've had 3 hits, one directly to the house and 2 close enough to do damage to items in the house. The hit on the house split my chimney into 2 pieces, traveled down the chimney into the firebox then exited the back of the firebox and hit my Jeep. Trashed everything in between also.

Proper grounding of the house service panel is the only precaution. However, being in electronics for 45 years, we've always said anything that can jump across 2 miles of open sky isn't gonna be stopped by a $8.00 power strip :-)

Got me also,serge box router and one monoter.

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
Oh my deductible. Over $4000.
I'll be eating this one.

Check again. Ours was considered an Act of God, so the deductible didn't apply, we got 100% covered.