Lightning Strikes Gamer's House

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Look around you right now and think about it for a minute, what would you lose if lightning struck your house. Let that sink in a bit before you click the link to read the story of how Jeff Hickman, executive producer of BioWare Mythic, lost a ton of electronics to a lightning strike.

"The storm's coming through. It's crazy. And all of a sudden we get, just like the loudest bang with the biggest brightest light that you've ever seen. And everything in the house goes dead. Everything turns black. And then one second later lights come back on. All the fire alarms are going off. And you literally smell ... it's like smoke in the air. It's an odd smoke. I don't know what it was, because there's nothing on fire. But there's this smell in the air, ozone or whatever you want to call it. I don't know what it was.
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I'd lose nothing cept time buying new stuff.
Everything important stays on flash drives which isnt much and all my electronic eqp is covered by my home owners insurance
 
last summer a lightning struck the water main in my front lawn. My network and television cables in my crawlspace under the house are just strung along the ground and hanging over the water and gas pipes and coming up through the floors in each room. Well needless to say, when the lightning struck the water main and knocked over half the tree in my front lawn, it also fried 3 televisions, the last VHS player in the house, a dvd player, 2 workgroup switches and a router. Fortunately my computers weren't harmed.

So yeah, don't leave your cables strung loosely in your crawlspace or basement. I probably wouldn't have had damaged equipment if the cables weren't touching the water pipes connected to the main. Tack it up to the floor joist. :-P
 
I always tell people that surge protectors are not designed to stop a direct lightning strike and they should always unplug any equipment they don't want destroyed.

Now if I'd just follow my own advice. Oh well, that's what backups and homeowner insurance is for.
 
Azhar said:
So yeah, don't leave your cables strung loosely in your crawlspace or basement. I probably wouldn't have had damaged equipment if the cables weren't touching the water pipes connected to the main. Tack it up to the floor joist. :-P
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Not necessarily. If your water pipes are part of your house's grounding system, then it would just travel through the cable's shielding to anything connected to them since the sheidling is usually grounded.
 
The office of a company that I used to write software for had its microwave network antenna struck by lightning once. We lost about half of the desktops in the office, about 1/4 of the servers, and all of the network switches and patch bays.

The smell lingered for weeks.
 
Grounding and lightning protection are two different things. I remember when I was a kid watching a tesla display inside the waterjackets on the living room radiator. Since we lived in an area prone to this we always unplugged everything when a storm was predicted. That hit still took out the well pump, 150 feet underground.

If I lost everything now I would move far away from technology and not make the same mistake twice.
 
Don't forget to unplug your network cables and modems. A guy I knew unplugged his computers during storms. It was funny (not for him) He had unplugged his computer, router and modem from power in his house. The lightning hit and went through his big calculator - jumped across to his external USB drive that was sitting right next to the calculator - into his computer - through the network cable - out the modem. He said a few days later that he still couldn't find the plastic cover to the power box for the calculator that was blown apart.
 
This happened to me a couple of years back. Direct hit. Huge bang and a flash of light.. Everything in the house went dead. Even some of our paintings and photos on the wall had been turned crooked from the impact. My PC was still going by some miracle but when I shut down, the PC wouldnt turn back on. Mobo was toast, as was my router. I had surge protectors installed but they didnt do shit. I've got a UPS unit installed for better protection now, but I still always shut down my PC when a thunderstorm rolls in.

I was able to collect insurance for the damaged hardware but I had a couple of days downtime I didnt like very much. The strike also corrupted some data on the HDD (some mp3s started skipping after it happened), so I replaced most of the devices in the machine just in case.
 
ryan_975 said:
I always tell people that surge protectors are not designed to stop a direct lightning strike and they should always unplug any equipment they don't want destroyed.

Now if I'd just follow my own advice. Oh well, that's what backups and homeowner insurance is for.
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Every storm that hits, I unplug my PC's surge protector and the home entertainment. :cool:
 
We got hit by lightning early this year, and it blew out every surge suppressor in the house and blew a few of the fuses into bits (we still had a old fusebox with glass fuses) but other then that the only thing damaged was one of the recievers in our TiVo (the was some exposed wiring at the dish which best anyone can figure took a large static charge and burned out the recievers input from the dish.)

We got real lucky, but I immediately went out and replaced the surge suppressors and got an electrician to replace our fuse panel with a circuit breaker box (and I had him run a seperate circuit for my computer and our Home Theater.)
 
lol @ those dinky surge protectors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

"An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amperes....An average bolt of positive lightning carries an electric current of about 300 kA — about 10 times that of negative lightning"

He's freaking lucky his house didn't burn down!
 
had lightning strike the backyard pretty close to the house. My lcd big screen was on at the time and it actually went all black for a second at the time of the strike.

I almost pee'd my pants it was so F'n loud. It came right back on and looks like no damage happened but was pretty scarry.

One of my work customers had a satellite dish get struck and it wasnt grounded. All their big screens and some of their POS equipment got totally fried.
 
A few years ago lightning hit within twenty feet of my house. All of the electronics on the main and second floor were fine, only the stuff in the garage and basement were affected, so we only lost the garage door opener, a TV and a treadmill.
 
don't most companies, like APC guarantee protection and offer compensation ($10,000-$100,000) If they fail?
 
ryan_975 said:
Don't quote me on this, but I don't think direct lightning strikes are covered.
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I've always been under the impression that APC covered lightning strikes if the equipment was hooked up properly and the protector was properly grounded.

Some info
http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=219
Damaging surges associated with lightning or utility problems can travel along your utility and data lines, damaging your electronic devices and destroying your valuable data. Even smaller everyday surges can degrade the performance of your electronics and decrease their life. The APC SurgeArrest Essential series represents the minimum level of surge protection that should be present on any of your computers and household electronics, with most models also providing surge protection for your phone lines. Its state of the art circuitry offers protection for sensitive electronic equipment against larger surges and multiple surge events. Additional features like plentiful outlets, status indicator LEDs and more make this our best value for surge protection - our lifetime Equipment Protection Policy guarantees it.
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From one of the SurgeArrest user guides -
[2] Protection Working Indicator - This indicator illuminates when the SurgeArrest is switched on, and is supplying conditioned utility power to the outlets. In the event of a sustained, high-energy surge (such as a lightning strike), this indicator will switch off. If this occurs, first check the Circuit Breaker and On/Off Control to ensure the SurgeArrest is on and receiving utility power. If it still does not operate, return the unit to APC for repair or replacement.
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I (personally) only buy APC surge protectors because of this.
 
(and repeating what I posted on Kotaku)
Running outside to check your house after it gets hit by lightning is about the dumbest thing you can do....next time you won't be so lucky when it strikes the house a 2nd time and you're looky-looing outside trying to find holes from the first strike.

That's why they tell you to call 911 if you believe your house is hit by lightning (although not like police and firemen have nothing better to do than get hit on your behalf).
 
"I'm like, 'Oh my god are you ok?' And he's fine. No marks on him… I'm like, 'So you're ok.'
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she said she heard the bang and her retainer shocked her, blistered her tongue. How it happened, who knows. But the lightning went in and tried to come out her mouth or something. I don't know.
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"Who knows if that big cool new surge protector will do anything. Hopefully it will. That's the only thing we've changed.
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you can get a surge protector that goes before your breaker box that is basically a surge protector that protects your whole house. Hopefully next time this happens, the lightning will kill that first and not everything else.
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"My house is near other houses. It's pretty much the same height. No idea why it would be the one."
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This guy sounds like a complete moron.
 
I thought lighting rods on top of the house suppose to attract the lightning to it and flow to the ground.
 
most likely did not use lightning suppressors surge protectors as they take there own life's to prevent the power from going into the sockets, Most Belkin surge protectors are lightning suppressors {they norm have an green and red light on them and state on the box and the strip that they are as well} there be no lights at all if the protection taken an big hit

Most that are cheap norm fully state that they are not lightning suppressors (in the UK they norm do state when they are not LS protection and if they don't you assume that they are not lightning suppressors)

as it most likely hit his power line (lightning suppressor before the box would of protected from that as that would of killed it self unless it had redundancy in it then it would of had to of been 3 direct hits depends on what he gets) or some thing in the roof that bridged to the house wiring where lightning suppressor before the box would of not helped

his network cables mite of been protected (they are norm lightning suppressors) as only the PSUs was toast or the switch burnt out before it could jump to the network or they was wireless

you can get lightning suppressors for dish and cable TV

I thought lighting rods on top of the house suppose to attract the lightning to it and flow to the ground.
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sounds perfect but does not always happen an company i used to service had an direct strike (had the 1inch thick strip that goes from the top of the building) and it Jumped to the Phone system (Toast) then leaked into the network (part of the phone system) as well taking 2 pcs with it (out of the 20) all the networking stuff was dead as well, in that case all of the surge protectors was dead that had the network stuff plugged into (they fired them selfs as they should off) power was still on as well no beakers tripped to the building

it can jump to internal wiring in the house in (sparks in the fusebox) but Direct power-line or internal wiring can make the fusebox go funky and ultimately kill other stuff in house
 
My cousin lost a TV, his directv receiver and a motherboard like this. Oh and it blew the telephone box off of his house.
 
Wait wait wait.....apparently the Bioware studio is like 10 minutes from where I live, and I didn't know about it.....brb stealing SW:TOR.....:(
 
Budzman said:
had lightning strike the backyard pretty close to the house. My lcd big screen was on at the time and it actually went all black for a second at the time of the strike.

I almost pee'd my pants it was so F'n loud. It came right back on and looks like no damage happened but was pretty scarry.

One of my work customers had a satellite dish get struck and it wasnt grounded. All their big screens and some of their POS equipment got totally fried.
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copy that, it sounds like a cannon was just shot right outside and keeping the urine in your bladder is a definite feat.
 
If you RTFA you'd see he does have insurance which is why the photo of the dead electronics was taken.
 
I had lighting hit my house about a year ago and it killed 2 TVs, and all of our cordless phones. Luckily my big screen, PC and all my gaming consoles and stuff were fine. The 2 TVs were older tube tvs.
 
Lightning can suk it!!! It has no soul and I have had the pleaure of him frying my shit.
 
zero2dash said:
I've always been under the impression that APC covered lightning strikes if the equipment was hooked up properly and the protector was properly grounded.
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I'll try and answer this the best I can - seeing as I was the claims manager for APC Equipment Protection policy ( I'm still with APC but do something different )

1st a surge protector will only protect your properly connected equipment from instantaneous surges and spikes. It will not protect you from brown outs or over voltage situations. When you see your lights flicker on and off after a lightning strike, these are small fluctuations that are pass right through your surge protector/suppressor. A UPS or even better a UPS with automatic voltage regulation (AVR) will protect your connected equipment. The AVR will allow you to run your equipment for a prolonged time because it will boost or trip the voltage instead of switching onto battery. A UPS without AVR will only last as long as the batteries last then it will shut down... Think rolling brownouts in the NE or Calf.

2nd. No matter how large the lighting strike is, if it hits the power grid outside your house, the only voltage that will enter said house will be 6K volts. That's because that is your breakover voltage for the insulation on the electrical service coming into your house. That is why surge protection is rated at it's level

3rd. A direct lighting strike, to your home you throw out all the protection you have as it's meaning less for the most part because most of the time, your house is going to catch fire to say the least. Then there is the EMP that a direct lighting strike can cause thus damaging connected equipment no matter how much protection you have.

4th grounding is your BFF. Make sure you home is grounded via one ground rod.(correct size and depth ) Your electric, telephone, cable, antenna, and or dish is all bounded to one ground wire. You don't run a network cable across your yard to that garage/shed you have in the back yard. Grounding loops will cause more damage to your equipment that no surge or UPS will protect you from.

It goes like this, if you have a lighting strike and you have some damage. ask yourself is your surge protector damaged and the connected equipment? If yes then it came in from the outside via the electrical service.

If only your connected equipment is damaged (DVD, TV, amp, PC) then it was caused by a grounding loop/issues.

example 1. - You have a TV connected to AC via a surge protector and it's connected to the Cable TV. However your electric has it's own ground and your Cable has a separate ground rod. You have a storm and lighting strikes the pole outside your home. Your TV is damaged but the surge is fine - what the hell happened. Well the surge dissipated the energy back to the Neutral then ground to the ground rod outside, however your cable while is also a source of it's own ground, which is separated by dirt (earth) . While the ground on the TVs AC ground just seen 6K volts (ok less then that but to make it easy) but the TV's cable ground is still at 0V. The difference is carried between your TV main circuit board thus causing damage. (ONLY USE ONE GROUND IT"S THE LAW)

example 2. old school PCs where they had a modem and an AC ground. same thing happens when you have two separate grounds connected via a MB. in this case, you would see ram/cpu and HD damage but your power supply and modem where fine. That old IBM standard of "dedicated isolated grounds are misinterpreted by your standard home electrical and thus causing you some big headaches when lighting strikes.

Some surge trivial.
-Most damaged is caused by brown outs caused by lighting. Thus a UPS or AVR is better
- Overhead lines are better protected from lighting strikes then underground cables.
- old house had a water supply ground (your ground is bonded to the city water pipe coming into your home. You replace your meeter for what ever reason and the guy forgets to put a jumper over the meeter = BAD. new meeters are made from ceramic unlike the old meeters which where made of cast iron.

Hope this helps some of you better understand surges, spikes and brownouts.

next we could talk about ground loops and your car stereo making that funny noise. :cool:
 
most likely did not use lightning suppressors surge protectors as they take there own life's to prevent the power from going into the sockets, Most Belkin surge protectors are lightning suppressors {they norm have an green and red light on them and state on the box and the strip that they are as well} there be no lights at all if the protection taken an big hit
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According to an electrician from the landline telephone company (who I asked about surge supressors and protectors), what you say here isn't necessarily correct. He said it is a common misunderstanding that "surge protectors as they take there own life's to prevent the power from going into the sockets." According to the electrician, that is incorrect and is not what surge protectors do. Surge protectors = surge supressors; they simply supress or reduce the amount of amperage coming in. Essentially, it would be better to have your computer hit with x-y amps than x amps (where y is less than x), and that is what they do (according to the electrician I had asked).

*shrugs*

I don't know.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Surge_suppressor
 
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