[gfmucci]

Originally Posted by travel

So stop smoking, quit drinking and eat out all the time and you'll decrease the odds of a house fire more than wasting your money on lighting rods. You can use the $3,000 for the increased restaurant expense or use some of it to get the special locks for your golf carts so they won't get stolen

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I'd rather be hit by lightning than stop eating out and having a few drinks.*

IMHO, that is....

Well, this unexpected additional risk of "lightning-strikes-thin-walled-gas-piping al la 'lightning rod' in-the-attic-burning-down-house-in-five-minutes" is not something we moved to TV for.* We evacuated Destin three times in 2005 for hurricanes, wondering if our house was still standing as we were on our way back home.* I don't want to wonder if our house is still standing after one of our more-frequent-than-hurricanes thunder storms when we're on our way back home from lunch at Toojays.

I'm certainly glad our situation isn't an "either/or": eating out a few times a week or getting lightning rods.* By the way, I already don't smoke, don't drink and we eat out all the time, so nothing really has to change ;D.

Talk to some lifetime Florida residents and ask how many of their homes were struck by lightning, let alone hit by it.

I've lived in Florida for 50 years (south and north).* No part of Florida has more lightning strikes than central.* I've seen the results of several homes struck by lightning.* I doubt they had thin-walled gas lines in their attic (a recent labor-saving material.)* The combination of frequency of lightning hits here and thin gas lines in the attic is more than I want to gamble on.