Quote:
Originally Posted by jrref
There is a Villager from Hadley who's house was struck by lightning several years ago. He's one of the 17 that was struck here in the Villages that had a Lightning Protection System installed. He's not on Talk of the Villages so he sent me the following to post on this thread so everyone can read about his experience.
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At approximately 6:30 PM on June 10, 2014, our house sustained a direct hit by lightning. The thunderstorm had passed, the skies were clearing, we had left for a meeting when the strike occurred.
While at the meeting, a neighbor three houses down the street called me and said his house was struck by lightening and asked for a reference for an electrician, as several of his circuit breakers had tripped wouldn’t reset.
We finished our meeting and headed home. When we turned onto our street, we noticed many of the neighbors standing in their front yards. When we pulled into our driveway, the garage door didn’t work. Uh oh.
Turns out it wasn’t our neighbors house that was hit… it was ours. And the strike blew out circuit breakers up and down our side of the street.
When we entered our home and investigated, we discovered our telephone point of interface had been blown off the outside wall (damaging the neighbor’s vinyl siding), so the telephones were dead, and many lights were out.
On further investigation we discovered our SECO whole house surge protector was totally destroyed, the Eaton whole-house surge protector was tripped, and most of the circuit breakers were tripped. Several of the circuit breakers couldn’t be reset. I checked in the attic, and there was no evidence of fire or structural damage.
SECO arrive that evening and replaced the SECO whole house surge protector and our electrician replaced the bad circuit breakers and checked the house wiring. We also three satellite receivers and a modem destroyed, all of which were connected to the unprotected telephone lines, a washing machine circuit card, and the garage door button.
The following day the lightening protection system technician came and inspected our lightening protection system. The system was unharmed, except for the top air terminal which had 1/4 to 1/2 inch burned off the top. The technician replaced that air terminal, which I subsequently gave to Len Hathaway.
Hope this helps…
Dana
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We talk about and show Dana's experience and show the damaged lightning rod at our presentations.
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As I would have suspected. Same result by putting a flag pole outside in the ground, just that the pole can take more than the system can, either way same result. The difference being that when it strikes the house with no system, there is a "limited" amount of damage depending on the bolt. Max damage would include some sort of effect on the houses on either side of the strike house. When you use the system, (much like a flag pole), yes you are attempting tolimit house damage however IF (which in your case) that lame ground wire they use survives the strike, more than 1 or 2 houses will be effected. This is what occured with all those homes around him losing power etc. The strike actually electrified the ground and sought out other avenues of "release". This is where something the size of a flag pole, much like a tree, has enough to it to help absorb that release of energy and subdue it.
This is exactly why when we were looking at houses I refused anything with or near that system. If I'm going to potentially attract lightening it's going to be with something that can absorb the energy.