FML: Lighting Strike

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archivalbackup

Gawd
Joined
Oct 12, 2007
Messages
643
I wanted to vent some frustration more than anything else, so here goes and hopefully someone else can learn from this.

As a network engineer and all around geek I have a ton of hardware running around my house, and knowing it's value I have everything in my house except for lights on either an APC UPS or APC Surge Arrest pro. Well over the weekend my house got struck by lightning during one of the most impressive storms I have witnessed; 6.5 inches of rain in a couple of hours. Even one of the smoke detectors was smoldering and going off so the Fire Department was called to check for any issues, and given the all clear.

The next day when power was finally restored my cable modem was stone dead. No lights, nothing. Not a big deal, not my equipment, so I went down to the office (amidst dozens of other people with fried equipment) and had it replaced with a Cisco modem in exchange for my RCA :) I got home and plugged it in, and nothing. As it ends up, a surge came in over the coax cable, burned out the cable modem, transferred to the Ethernet, burned out the routed port on my Cisco 1841, transferred through my 1841, and burned out the first eight ports on my 3750G switch.

I now have a cable surge arrest installed on the coax coming into the house, and another on the Ethernet between the cable modem and the rest of my lan. I am still in the process of filing a home owners claim for the damage; I think my agent was a bit surprised at the value of this stuff.

My neighbor ended up loosing all of the TV's in their house as well, but their insurance has already paid out. Anyway, FML, and put surge suppression on your coax and phone coming into your house.
 
Wow that sucks. I wouldnt think lightning could make it through so many pieces of equipment.
 
Yup...it can come in via many different ways...basically any copper coming into your house. You can put surge strips on all your electrical outlets, but it can still come in via DSL lines or coax lines, etc...hit your modem, and continue on into your ethernet, as you experienced.

I've had clients which are in buildings that are highly prone to direct electrical hits...and I mean direct, like blowing a huge hole in the roof of the building. I have a golf resort client that has the main clubhouse up on a hill. Golf course, naturally most of the surrounding area is open. Clubhouse built with quite a bit of steel beam. About once every 5 years I'm going major replacement there..finally on the last hit, he ponied up and asked me to do all I could do to protect their network. I went crazy with APC NetArrest stuff all over the place.

You can do all you can do to help protect against little stuff....but if you get a direct strike in the ground around your building...or right into your building....nope, it's gonna take you all out.
 
Ha, I just got a notice on my door from the water department that my meter has stopped registering any water usage. Guess I lost that too.
 
that sucks man.. We got lucky that nothing happened. But these last few weeks in IA have been crazy with all of the rain and crap
 
Back when I used to do some side PC repair during college, I remember that every time we had a major storm I had to replace more than a few dial-up modems. People forget all of the possible entry points for electricity.
 
While you're at it, install service-entrance "whole house" surge protection. I use a Panamax GPP8005. Sorry for the bold but I cannot stress how important this is. It would not have helped you in the coax situation but I would rather see you use a service-entrance surge protector without end-device surge protectors than the other way around. A combination of both is best. Make sure any other lines (e.g. phone lines, antennas) are also protected.
 
Another concern for lightning protection is the ground itself.

A water main may serve as a fine ground reference for normal system operation, but a lightning strike requires a low-inductance path to ground (with a hefty current-carrying ability). Standard practice at radio/TV transmitter sites (which have very tall, and very conductive metal poles hooked into very expensive hardware), is to have all electrical service, antenna connectors, and data lines go through surge protectors (which are located in the same physical area to minimize the distance lighting is going to travel (induction is another thing that can trash your gear)). All grounds, including equipment racks, need to connect together at one point, and one point alone, to eliminate potential differences. Then, you have a thick copper strip (4" wide is standard), which has a very low inductance, that connects to your grounding rods (driven as deep as possible).
 
I am interested in a whole house setupa long with a coax cable unit. I have had a few power surges here, one ate the wii power brick, and my tv also has interference on any aux input.

My gear in the basement is all surge/battery protected, but if a whole panel option is available, and only 200 I am interested. Other than those units built into surge protectors I have not seen anything coax.
 
I use this for coax: http://www.amazon.com/Broadband-Cable-Lightning-Surge-Protector/dp/B0016AIYU6/ref=pd_cp_e_1. It's installed right near my distribution panel and I ran a ground wire to the distribution panel as you are supposed to. I used 10 gauge wire, crimped a ring connector on and used one of the screws of the distribution panel to secure it. (I could have run the ground wire inside of the panel and to the bus bar but I saw little reason to.)

I use a second coax surge protector at my TV, built into my power strip. I am not using a power strip one for the modem. I've been considering the ethernet surge protector between the cable modem and router just as an extra precaution but I haven't bothered as of yet.
 
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dandragonrage said:
I use this for coax: http://www.amazon.com/Broadband-Cable-Lightning-Surge-Protector/dp/B0016AIYU6/ref=pd_cp_e_1. It's installed right near my distribution panel and I ran a ground wire to the distribution panel as you are supposed to. I used 10 gauge wire, crimped a ring connector on and used one of the screws of the distribution panel to secure it. (I could have run the ground wire inside of the panel and to the bus bar but I saw little reason to.)

I use a second coax surge protector at my TV, built into my power strip. I am not using a power strip one for the modem. I've been considering the ethernet surge protector between the cable modem and router just as an extra precaution but I haven't bothered as of yet.
Click to expand...

I think I got one of those outside the house, I know whatever is out there is grounded.
 
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Like I said in some other post a UPS won't do shit for you if the lightning strike is close enough. I saw it all the time years ago with clients bringing me fried computers that were plugged into a UPS.

We get nasty lightning around here which I found out the hard way for myself. I got nailed a few years back with a strike near my house. It grounded itself to the phone line and coax line(both underground) and took out my phone, my DSL modem, router, nic, and one T.V.. I had my computer plugged into a APC ups, I think it was along the lines of a 900VA..I had it for a few years at the time. But it took the APC unit with it also. It never worked right after the strike.

I replaced everything and bought a higher end CyberPower UPS which I got for a good price. I always used APC in the past but I figured i'd try something new, works great. I run my phone line through it before it connects to my DSL modem. So far so good. I also have higher end surge protectors for the T.V.'s now, I run the coax into them and then to the T.V.'s. Either way I unplug stuff now if i'm home and we have lightning near the house.



Many electric companies offer surge protection for the whole house for a monthly fee. It's a good option.
 
Yeah, pictures would be cool. Years ago, in the days of VT-100s, I worked at a site that had two buildings - the terminals in one building were connected to the mainframe in the other building by a buried 50-pair cable. We were in SoCal - where "you never get lightning" and the installer didn't do anything to surge protect or isolate the cable endpoints. Well, what do you know, we had a strike in the parking lot pretty much right over the cable conduit.

The clerks at the terminals all said that their now very dead terminals "sounded like something exploded inside" and started smoking. We tore some open and it was amazing. The plastic covers on the line-driver chips were literally blown off and they had the most interesting spiderweb burn marks criss-crossing the circuit boards inside.

What was really amazing is that none of them actually caught fire...
 
A pair of SFP's or GBICs and a short fiber patch cable would stop surges from flowing up the chain. Power doesn't flow over fiber, as glass is one of the best insulators around.

Still haft to protect the power supplies to the equipment thou.
 
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