Lightning Strike, Breakers Tripped

[Norminn]

Wowser! Lightning strike two nights ago shook our house and sent our puppy (briefly) into hiding. Our son lives about 1/2 mi. away as the crow flies; the hit turned off some of his breakers. His across-the-street neighbor got interior damage (pin-hole leaks) in his baseboard heating system.

If lightning trips some breakers, seems to me that it also damages wiring. No appliances damaged at son's place. After his heart restarted, he turned off main breaker, looked around, turned back on and all seems to be okay. Suggestions? Have electrician in to check it out?

[trader_4]

It could certainly trip breakers without damaging wires. If there is no evidence of anything else happening, eg devices/appliances, on those circuits damaged, he's likely OK. I would get a whole house surge protector installed which would protect against future events like this.

[Ed Pawlowski]

The tripping breakers probably protected the wires. I has a similar experience a couple of years ago. Not sure where the hit was, but the outside light on my detached garage got the main surge. Blew out a receptacle it was plugged into, damaged the breaker in the house, blew out the TV and receiver on that circuit.

What really pissed me off was that I had to go out and buy a new 47" flat screen TV to replace the 32" CRT. Would not have been able to justify that otherwise.

[John G]

*I suggest that you do have an electrician come out to have a look at the g rounding electrode system. This consists of a water pipe ground, ground ro ds, bonding of all interior metal pipes, a bond to the main neutral in the electrical panel, and bonding of the telephone and cable TV terminals.

Having a good ground is a simple way to protect your house from lightning. Some enhancements to a good ground for extra lightning protection would be a surge protector at the main panel and lightning rods on the roof.

The neighbor probably got the pinhole leaks because those pipes were not pr operly bonded to the grounding electrode system. The difference in potentia l caused the arc to burn through the pipes. This has been a problem with f lexible jacketed gas piping. It doesn't take much of an arc to burn a hole and cause a gas leak.

John Grabowski

[gfretwell]

[gfretwell]

Ditto on the grounding system Do you have a surge protector in the panel or on the service?

[philoÂÂ]

Good advice.

I recently had my service upgraded by a licensed electrician and he put in *two* 8' ground rods.

He said the requirement now is a total of 16' of grounding.

With the old ground rod disconnected I found 600 ohms of resistance between it and the new rods...that means the old ground was fairly poor!

[gfretwell]

Ground rods are pretty poor electrodes anyway. The best was the metal water pipe, when the whole system was metal. Now with all the plastic used, it sucks too. The best electrode these days is the steel in the foundation of your house, if it is available.

[clare]

Which is why you will NEVER see any of that my place. When I went to have natural gas piped to my BarBQ that's all anyone wanted to install. When I asked one plumber if he'd install if I he iron pipe cut to size, threaded, and test fit he said ":if you can do that, you can do the whole job yourself - just call for an inspection when you are done" - I did.it. Called for inspection, inspector said it put a lot of professional plumbers/pipe-fitters to shame.

[philoÂÂ]

My vintage 1898 house has no steel foundation but in addition to the ground rods, there is also a cold water ground.