I was in my driveway with a Mexican concrete guy when my garage mounted weather station was hit *the second time). Very exciting stuff. The shock wave felt like getting hit in the face with a wet towel. Everything was blue for a second. I am not sure if it was really blue or that was just an electrical shock to the optic nerve. It's a good thing the GDO was still working or my buddy Poncho would have made a roadrunner style hole in the door.
We get plenty of thunderstorm practice here in Florida. There is a thunderstorm just about every day for 6-7 months of the year. We call that thing "Flash/bang" lightning when they both occur at the same time. Usually when a tree is hit, you will see little sticks everywhere, burning on both ends.
Few years ago I had several surge protectors get fried by a voltage surge when a tree fell dropping the high tension wire on the low one. Only item I lost was a microwave without a surge protector. Many years ago we had lost a couple of unprotected TV sets now all electron stuff in my house is protected. Also have usb's on all computers.
The house on the farm where my mother grew up had no electricity and was dwarfed by a HUGE Oak tree, about 3 times as tall as the house and some 18 feet in circumference at chest height. They had both a well and a cistern on the "back porch" - opposite side of the house from the oak, and a big bank barn on the other side of the tree - house and barn both festooned with lightning rods. All rhis perched on the top of a hill, no-less. Several times the cystern pump or well pump were struck, and on at least one occaision the ligtning jumped from the pump, through the back door,to the aluminum edging on the kitchen counter, to the wood cookstove, to the water pump on the kitchen sink - on one occaision going through an enamelled steel dipper and blowing off the enamel on the earth side about the size of a silver dollar. The oak was struck numerous times, and fire-balls flying around the yard during a thunderstorm were not at all uncommon. Who knows how many times either the house or barn took a direct hit - and never a fire, although it did blow part of the roof off the barn at least once.
Forward ahead 50 years or so, and friends who also live at the top of a hill on a farm were having problems keeping electric fence chargers functioning, because with about 2 miles of fence connected, a lightning strike anywhere within 3 or 4 miles would induce such a charge on the fence that it would kill the charger. We ended up installinf an air-core choke and spark-gap lightning arrester on the fence and in a storm you could see the spark jump the gap to ground and the fence-charger l;ived another day.
UPS's??
trader_4 posted for all of us...
Tell that to my neighbor...
To all: I was in the Army with a guy who one day in casual conversation mentioned that he had once been struck indirectly by lightning. (We sometimes called him "old man Robbie: because he was 24 years old.)
It was not much of a story and I don't think he told it to anyone else.
Then, a few months later word spread through the barracks that Robbie had been hit (indirectly) by lightning while he was on guard duty.
When I got the word, everyone in my unit freaked out when all I said was:
Again?
Then they learned about his previous encounter.
Any, once they replaced his eardrum he was OK
Oh boy, W Tom will have a field day with that one and rightly so.
Tell us more. Where and how did this direct hit to an underground service take place?
Some have DisplayPort, some have hdmi and all of mine have USB.
Top or front loading? And do you use surge supressors?
The lightning lab at UCF in conjunction with Florida Power and Light have done a lot testing with lightning and they have some great Fulgurites that showed lightning penetrating 2 meters or more underground. Safer underground? certainly but if it is a wide open spot with nothing but sand for it to hit, that cable down there 4 or 5 feet may be pretty attractive to a bolt.
BTW in my inspecting career, the most robust lightning protection I have ever seen in a building is for a toll booth at MM99 on I-75. It is the only decent target for miles around, The array was more than they put in the ground for the radio towers that are along the highway.
Do you disagree that the risk with underground is lower?
If yes, then why do you say it doesn't matter which it is? This kind of clever phrasing is what politicians use to make a point that sounds stronger than it should. But I see it a lot from regular folk.
Here the statement should have skipped half of the first sentence and been "Risk from surges () remains whether the AC service is overhead or underground." That's all you are saying, but for some reason** you want to say O vs. U doesn't matter, even though, if the risk is lower, of course it matters.
**It may just be a habit people pick up from listening to others who speak in the same way. But IMVSO it's a bad habit.Now I"m just quibbing but you must mean major appliances. I've taken toasters, table radios, etc. apart and there was no surge protection.
Most of these things are fairly immune to transients. A toaster will just get momentarily and imperceptibly hotter for a few microseconds. This stuff really did not become a huge issue until we started using CMOS and that is everywhere now. Microwaves and washing machines would still be fine if they did not have that little circuit board. Usually the bad part is the clock. We had a real nice "lightning damaged" microwave in our shop. I drilled a hole through that touch panel and put in a spring wound timer. It worked great.
Came in on phone line. Phone line also needs protection.
Greg
We don't sell these things. We installed effective protection. Direct lig htning strike without damage were routine. In one venue, all wires were un derground. Since single point earthing was missing, all computers in the b lock house (on surge protectors) were damaged. That strike to earth was a direct strike to underground wires.
I never said plug-in protectors do nothing. Constantly stated is that it o nly does what it claims to do - nothing more. To protect from a type of su rge that typically causes no damage; a transient made irrelevant by robust protection inside every appliance. A plug-in protector does exactly what i t claims to do. It does not claim to protect from the other and typically destructive type of surge. Lightning is but one example of that other type of surge. A tree struck by lightning can be a direct connection to incoming conductor s - especially buried wires or metal pipes. EMP did not cause damage. Curr ent in a tree is then passing into buried conductors to causes damage. Usi ng appliances as part of the path that connects to earthborne charges maybe 4 kilometers distant. That same current can be so harmful as to even kill four legged animals.
That current through a struck tree is especially destructive when all incom ing conductors do not enter at a common service entrance. Makes little dif ference whether those conductors are overhead or underground since both nee d same properly earthed protection.
International design standards defined internal protection for electronics long before PCs existed. It is not debatable. Otherwise that other's deni als included numbers - not personal speculation. Surges that are hundreds of joules are routinely converted into rock stable, low DC voltages to safe ty power semiconductors. Tiny joule (plug-in) protectors, doing what its m anufacturer claims, are doing near zero protection. It does exactly what t he manufacturer says it will do.
Most ports are front and rear. Never really seen a port on top though I suppose it's possible.
No spin in that statement. Another has demonstrated why why surges can eve n enter a house from underground conductors or geology. He heard the arc o f lightning current passing through his house. Ten second later, he heard the sound from that lightning entering earth some two miles distant.
How at risk are your household appliances? Geology is a major parameter. That current enters on overhead or underground conductors - wires or pipes. A nearby struck tree can be a surge current connected directly into house hold applies - if a properly earthed 'whole house' solution is not implemen ted.
What does an effective protection system like this typically cost?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.