Lightning Strikes Home in DeLuna
 

Has anyone heard about the home in DeLuna that was hit by lightning last Thursday?

Made a hole in the roof, small fire and somehow damaged the water line and driveway.

We are seeing more homes hit recently due to the denser population and severe storms.

If you decide to get a lightning protection system be sure to get a UL certified installer. A1 and Triangle do installations here in the Villages.

And yet, ANOTHER! If this doesn't convince you of the need for surge protection and lightening rods, I don't know what will! Two homes in one week! The other was in the village of Charlotte and information was posted on this forum.

Lightning protection systems are very expensive and not cost effective, especially since the damage is covered by your homeowners insurance.

A surge protector will do nothing to prevent a direct lightning strike to a roof.

Total redo of your house by insurance, plus you need to read what that surge protection really covers

Really?

Have you thought through the impact of your home burning to the ground?

Ever delt with an insurance company after a total loss?

A LPS costs little more than most insurance deductablrs and are very effective at minimizing the risk.

That's why the Villages puts them on key infrastructure buildings.

If you had an in-depth discussion with Danny at A-1 Lightening, you would have a very different point of view.

Yes, material items are just stuff, replaceable

Yes family owned insurance agents, with years of experience for total loss.

So does Disney to draw lightning away from the people who don’t or can’t come out of the rain

You can say all you want that insurance will cover the loss but it can take a year or more to re-build your home in the current construction environment. In addition, when lightning hits your home, it will most likely punch a whole in your roof and start ricocheting around the attic and the interior of your home like a bullet looking for ground. If you or anyone in your household gets in the way, the lightning will kill you. I don't think that situation is coverend by insurance. In the strike in this post lightning found ground at the water meter and exploded the meter on the utility side and part of the driveway in addition to making a hole in the roof and starting a fire. Luckily someone was home to call the fire department right away. The people in Linden who's house was hit by lightning weren't so lucky because they were not home and the house burnt to the ground by the time someone noticed the fire and called for help.

A typical lightning protection system costs anywhere from $2,000- $2,500 depending on the size of your home. Larger homes will cost more. Get an estimate from a UL certified installer like A1 or Triangle Lightning Protection. Well worth the cost given the alternatives if you get hit.

As far as surge protection, you are correct it will do very little if you house takes a direct hit but that would be the least of your worries if that happened. The ensuing fire, smoke damage, potential loss of life outweighs your TV or refrigerator burning out from the strike.

What many don't know is even cloud to cloud lightning near your house can cause distructive power surges that can destroy electronic equipment. Even if a single surge doesn't destroy your TV or A/C over time multiple surges will damage electronic devices and appliances. This is why you hear people say their TV or A/C just stopped working without any events. Could have been from power surges over time. So what do you do? Spend the $500 and get Pike or Lenhart or whichever electrician you like and have them install an Eaton CHSPT2ULTRA surge protector at your circuit breaker panel. This will protect surges from entering your home from outside and protect from the ongoing surges from inside your home. This plus point of use power strip surge protectors at you computer, TV, etc.. will give you excellent protection from power surges. If you want to go further you can also add the Seco Meeter Treater surge protector installed at your electric meter but that mainly protects power surges from your power line which is not as common but surge protection is a layered system so the more the better.

I'm part of the Villages Lightning Study Group led by Len Hathaway who gives talks on lightning in the Villages, publishes articles in the Villages News, and who keeps all the data for lightning events in the Villages for the past 15 years.

Getting lightning protection is an individual choice. It's like deciding to get flood or sink hole insurance. Your decision will be based on your tolerance for risk. That said, you need to have all the facts so you can make an intelligent decision and that's what the Villages Lightning Study Group does. If you have any questions please PM me.

You also need to remember, when you see cloud to ground lightning strikes off in the distance, that lightning is hitting the ground somewhere. It could be in an open field, golf course, water or someones house. With the population density in the Villages growing there are vastly more homes now that can and will be hit by lightning which is why we are hearing more and more reports. The home here struck in DeLuna was an open field last year so no one would have known about the stirke.

There is also an excellent web site created by Frank Cristie, another member of the study group here -> Lightning Protection Systems - Lightning Protection The Villages

Click on "More" in the upper right side of the Menu to see all the Information on Lightning Protection Systems and Surge Protection.

Excellent info and synthesis Jref!

Is there is any correlation and/or increased risk related to metallic gas lines in the attic?

The risk for the gas lines is when lightning strikes the house or near by there has been evidence of the corrigated gas lines puncturing (getting holes) from the electromagnetic pulse of the strike and the gas igniting. Especially with the older homes north of 466. There have been documentated cases where a home was struck by lightning and a fire ensued from the gas lines in the attic. Fortunately in several of these cases the homeowner was home, called the fire department and shut off the gas and put out the fire. The Villages upgraded the gas lines in the homes south of 44 but they are still of a corrigated type. So if you have a home with gas and you are concerned about lightning then get a Lightning Protection System. The installer will bond (ground) the gas manifold in the attic and the rest of the outside system which will virtually eliminate this issue. But remember, nothing is 100%. The alternative is to replace all your gas lines with solid metal pipe but that's a big expense and may be very hard to do in an older home.

Not that expensive
 

In my experience lightning protection system (rods) on our 3/2 CYV from Triangle in 2022 was well worth the cost of $1300, especially as we are snowbirds. As far as homeowners insurance goes sure, but I’d rather do what I can in the first place to mitigate a direct hit and resulting damage, repair & upheaval. A well installed LPS is like an ‘additional insurance policy’ but a one-off payment.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Here is a link to stuff Frank sells?" Since you started this advertisement thread, are you involved in this business venture as well? While your motives may have started out pure, it seems your intent is to increase fear and drive sales.

LOL you need far better information, neither will help you. 200% guarantee.

Do the math. Assume that a lightning protection system for an average Villages house would cost $2,000. So, to protect the Villages, that would be $140 million ($2,000 x 70,000 houses). In my opinion, it would not be worth the cost. The builder could offer it as an option, but I don't think they would get many takers.

Since you are effectively bringing the ground potential up over the roof with the grounded lightning rods, wouldn't you be making it more likely to attract a lightning strike?

Thank you for this info. We live two blocks from the DeLuna house. I was at a class at Fenney during the storm and heard the sirens. My husband was home but had no idea the fire trucks were so close to home until I got home and saw them surrounding our rec center, which is directly across the street from the house that was struck. We didn’t know the details of the strike until I just read your comment here as it’s not being talked about in our DeLuna group.

Having come from California where we never had to worry about lightning strikes in our area of the state, we are feeling a bit nervous at this point. In fact, as a native Californian I’ve never seen anything like the storms we have here. They are scary!

There hasn't been anything published about the cause of the fire in Charlotte, except for one poster's opinion.

I think you’re right. The couple in the DeLuna home didn’t lose their house to fire but it’s currently unlivable due to the damage it and the water main sustained. It’s a huge inconvenience to experience if you can avoid it with a LPS.

I posted the web site for information only since there are not many sites that have everything in one place. It's a good source to start from for those wanting more information on the topic.

What's important is if you are going to get a Lightning Protection System for your home you need to hire a UL Certified installer or the system might not be installed or work properly. There is some science that goes into the design to get it right.

Also, for surge protection, it's a layered system. The more the better and many don't understand the differences between the surge protector at the meter, the surge protector installed at the circuit breaker panel and the point-of-use protectors.

I’m having lightening rods installed 7/14
 

I went to a very informative POA meeting about lightening rods and decided for me, Lightening Rods were the way to go. I called A-1 and Danny, the owner answered all my questions, gave me an estimate and I decided it was worth the price for peace of mind. Insurance has for most of us a deductible. Add that to being displaced and loosing everything, the cost is well worth it. Go to the POA website and watch the meeting. Two electrical engineers and a meteorologist spoke. They live in the Villages.
All government buildings have lightening rods as well as the Village Squares and various other buildings in TV.
Don’t listen to hype and false information!

I heard the fire department broke a hole in the roof. Not sure if it the lightning strike had also created a hole. I live on Pezzullo and I didn't get a notice about boiling water.

There isn’t much info being shared about this strike here in DeLuna, so maybe that’s correct. I do know only Crego Ct got the boil water notice. It was posted in our DeLuna FB group.

Although I understand your point, it doesn't work like that.

Lightning is complicated because it can be Cloud to Cloud, Cloud to Ground and Cloud to Structure. Most of the time in the Cloud to Structure case the cloud builds up negative charges and the structure or ground builds up positive charges. When the potential reachs a certain critical point, you get a lightning strike. If you have lightning rods the rods develop a concentration of positive charges at their tips which "draw" the strike to that point if a strike occurs, safely diverting the charge to earth ground vs hitting other parts of the roof causing a fire. There are also other situations that can happen but are too complicated to explain here but this is the basic idea of how the lightning rods work.

So for example, if you have 10 homes in an open field with only one with lightning rods, during a severe storm all 10 homes would build up positive charges on their roofs. If the negative charges in a cloud were strong enough to cause a lightning strike, all 9 of the homes would have a relatively equal chance of being hit randomly on their roof structure causing a fire where the 1 with the lightning rods would most likely be hit at one of it's lightning rods diverting the charge safely to earth ground without damage or fire.

I'm the engineer giving the talk on Surge Protection at that presentation.

That's not correct. The lightning strike made the hole which caught the roof on fire. The fire department may have made the hole bigger when putting out the fire and then they put a tarp over that portion of the roof.

If you think about it, why would the fire department make a hole in the roof if there was no fire?

Unfortunately, The Villages doesn't like to publicize "bad news" which is why things like this are not widely reported. The strike a few weeks ago in Linden was reported by the local groups and the homeowner who witnessed the strike.

The fire department will not report the event as lightning unless there is clear evidence or someone witnessing the event.

Insurance will certainly cover the expense, but not one's inconvenience if you have to move somewhere else during repairs. Loss of irreplaceable memorabilia in our homes can not be recovered by insurance. I installed my own, per state requirements, for less then $500. This may not be practical for everyone due to their mobility issues, but having them installed certainly should give one piece of mind. You are absolutely right that whole house surge protection (surge arrestor at electric circuit breaker box), as well as a surge protecting devices at every appliance with electronics in them is an absolute minimum. Florida has the highest level of lightning occurance in the USA, owner/consumer be aware.

Maybe I missed something but for me, that is a very strange web site.

Other than the surge protection recommendations, it reads like some kind of a LPS inspection scam. The goofy installation video is rediculous, makes it hard to take anything there serious.

From the street the Linden home looked like the gas line was hit in the left front corner. Black scorch mark on the corner. The concrete block wall was cracked and bowed out from the strike.

Since the insurance companies have dictated that a roof needs to replaced every 10 years, do the LPS have to be taken down while the roof gets replaced ? This would mean more than a one time cost to install.

Yes when your roof needs replacement the LPS needs to be taken down and re-installed on the new roof. We have had someone do this and it wasn't as expensive as a new installation since most of the system can be re-used.

I should have noted, Click on "More" in the upper right side of the Menu to see all the Information on Lightning Protection Systems and Surge Protection.

But, isn't the house with lightning rods effectively 15 or 20 feet higher than the other houses, making it more likely to get struck as lightning will want to take the shortest path?

All homes are at different heights and lightning rods are typically about 12 inches long for residential installations.

Lightning is unpredictable and we have seen cases where a house next to a very large tree was struck and the tree was not so there is no way to predict what can happen.

Well, it's probably an unanswerable question since strikes are relatively rare and always different circumstances. However, I have to question the blanket claim that LPS does not attract lightning. How does one substantiate that? If there is a buildup of millions of volts in the clouds in my area that is looking for a place to go, it just seems logical that the house with the lightning rods that have that great connection to ground and are closer to that charge in the clouds than the other houses would be the likely path that lightning would choose.

How many houses have experienced lightning damage and what was the cost of the damage in the last 10 years in The Villages?

What percentage of houses in The Villages have lightning protection systems?

You can hype lightning protection systems all you want, but without this information, you cannot have an serious or productive discussion about the need for a lightning protection system.

Good questions, the key is giving the energy a safe path to go.

There are ground wires in the house wiring criss crossing throughout the attic and home.
L And If you have natural gas, there are grounded metalic lines the attic. Neither can safely direct the energy.

The LPS provides a high energy path to ground around the exterior of the building to dissipate the strike safely thus reducing the risk.

Knowing The Villages installs LPS on critical infrastructure is enough verification for me.

Does UL certify “installers”?

Lightning Protection Professional Certification | UL Solutions

I'd also look for someone with 5+ years experience and check references.

Len Hathaway has the statistics and I asked him to answer this question with the facts but in retrospect although your home is insured, lightning and the ensuing fire can cause loss of life, loss of unreplaceable personal belongings, loss of your primary residence for a year or more depending on the amount of destruction. You also need to consider the incredible stress on your family during the re-build when your home is damaged or destroyed or repair and replace with power surge destruction. That said, just like getting sink hole or flood insurance you need to determine you tolerance for Risk.

As mentioned, the people in the home in DeLuna were lucky because someone was home to call the fire department quickly but the people in Linden were not.