I guess you can consider the palm tree to be your lightning protection system ;-).Taller structures are generally hit first. My home owner's insurance policy does not provide a discount for lightning rods. I assume, from an actuarial point of view, it doesn't make sense to do so. I also find it interesting that they are not part of the building codes but there are a number of hurricane features such as roof tie downs, wind loading requirements for windows, and reinforcements for garage doors in the building codes. This actually surprises me as the cost during new home construction would be minimall and FL has some pretty good building codes. The odds of getting hit would appear to be relatively low as we seem to hear about 1 home being hit per year out of 55,000 homes in The Villages. That, however, is little consolation if it is your home. I guess you can think of lightning rods as insurance and insurance generally lets you sleep better at night. Lightning rods appear to be relatively rare in The Villages - as far as I can tell there are none in my Village.
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Originally Posted by rdhdleo
We've had lightening rods for many years now, it jut made me feel better....LOL However as far as the rods attracting lightening let me just say, we had a very tall queen palm next to the house and last year lightening found it! Killed the tree and ran into the ground to cable , even with whole house surge protector killed a number of electronics in the house because it came in through cable and phone line. Just my experience.
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