End of Days won't happen until the Entertainment Dept figures out how to package it at the squares... and gets the merchants to do a special "end of Days" sale.

It is the installers job to get a good ground. At my home the three driven 8-ft ground rods met the test. I have heard at some homes they had to drive rods to 30 ft. We have discussed the matter with Dr. Radkov as we believe that the report issued a few years ago was being misinterpreted as reason not to install lightning rods. Also, the electric utilities in this state have been grounding their equipment in this soil for over a 100 years.

Lightning rods were on my house when I bought it (re-sale home) along with the SECO whole house surge protection and I also have SECO individual surge protectors on my televisions and computer.

Plenty of "piece of mind" based upon statistics alone. But paranoia sets in every time some remote incident happens in The Villages, at least on this site. So, be afraid, be very afraid!

Get lightning rods, sink hole coverage, carry a concealed gun, put anti theft devices on your golf cart, buy flood insurance, get extra dead bolts, don't use your credit card anywhere and on and on.

It never ends!

We have been tossing around the idea of instaling lightning rods even before we moved to Florida. When in VA, the house behind us and the house across the street in front of us were both damaged by lightning. It is a crying shame that the insurance companies don't give you any discount for installing lightning rods. They must be of some benefit. Have you ever noticed that every building at Walt Disney World and all The Villages buildings commercial property have them? If they weren't beneficial, do you think they would be there? I think we will have to rethink the installation.

I thought about lightening rods and did the math. About one house a year in The Villages burns from a lightening strike. I think there must be about 50,000 homes in The Villages, so the odds are that my house will burn from lightening (being conservative) less than once every 40,000 years. Since fire from lightening is insured, lightening rods, even if they are 100% effective, appear to be a really expensive insurance.

They aren't cheap if done properly. I understand the hesitation.

$1,500 is really expensive? Might try the math again. Try doing the "what if" decision making approach. You might have insurance to rebuild your home, but what are your photos, documents, cash, jewelry and loss of use of the home worth?

Yesterday at the gym I was talking to a neighbor of the home that was struck on Isleworth Circle. Some of you might know that the house had a 5 car garage. She said the owners had an ATV, an RV, a couple of motorcycles and a boat. All the adult toys and mounted in the attic of the garage was an air compressor so they could fill the tires of any vehicle when they wanted.

I was thinking that if the roof was hit by lightning, that compressor in the attic might of been the reason the fire took off like it did. All those vehicles in the garage each with a tank filled with gas probably didn't help either.

I don't understand why the compressor would be of any consequence. It is just a tank filled with compressed air. I can understand the vehicles with tanks full of fuel once the strike was made, but not the compressor.

If the home had natural gas the main runs up in the attic.....like ours. The two fires I witnessed here in TV you could see the gas flames shooting into the air from the attic....

To the best of my knowledge there are no natural gas lines on the south side of 466A, and anyone with propane gas must have a buried tank; at least, any of my neighbors who have propane had to bury the tank.

But...the lines run from the tank somehow. In the ground or through the attic? The tank is in the front yard and the summer kitchen and the pool is in the back yard. Something nags at me about where? Anybody know?

Lightning Rods
 

Did this house in Pinnellas have lightning rods? One of the pictures after the fire looks like rods on the roof