Lightning Strike
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I'll be the first to say it...Holy Crap!!0 -
My older sister was hit by lightning 3 times.
Our house is the last house on the power/phone poles coming into our farm land.
The first time she was on the phone and the lightning came in along the pole lines. The phone melted on the table and her hand was thrown back wards with the handset.
The second time she was doing the dishes in the kitchen and lightning hit our deep well
pump. She felt a "tingle" in her hands and lost hand control for about 30 minutes. The pump shot up out of the well pipe like a rocket. We had a warranty on the pump from Sears. When I dropped the piece of charcoal on the Sears counter, the sales man said I should have had a lightning protection box on the circuit wiring. That's when I reached into my bag and pulled out another lump of coal.
"Like this one???"
The last time, she was running into the house when a tree she was passing was hit and split down the middle. She felt the shock in her feet as she ran out of her flipflop slippers.
After that, any time she was in our retreat home, if it was lightning outside she would lay in bed under the covers till it was over. :shock:0 -
An insurance company called us for an inspection of a house they had covered that was nailed by lightning. The first thing we noticed when we arrived was the telephone wire from the pole to the house, it was just a line of ashes across the yard. The TV screen was blown across the living room, light switches were hanging out of the walls, nearly all the light bulbs were shattered, the air conditioner was blown apart with the oil sprayed on the wall. My Dad cut into a wall and found the romex wiring insulation melted. The insurance adjuster asked what was needed to get the power back on. My Dad told him that until the WHOLE house was rewired, he wasn't going to risk his contractor's license for any amount of money. They paid for a service call and we never went back. Lightning does some crazy things! 0 -
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I had a house hit by lightning yaers ago : Done $30,000 in damage : everything electrical had to be replaced !!!
Thank God for home-owners !
Also seen a cousin of mine get hit by lightning : Knocked out cold , Other than a 3 day headache ? He wasnt hurt : Me and some other fool cousins thought I was funniest thing we had ever seen ????
Thanks !!!0 -
We had a lightning strike near us and it wasn't a point hit but spread out over a football field-sized area, the best guess is the lightening had a number of legs that hit simultaneously. We were lucky, cost us two TV's and a computer. The surge protectors blew. but I guess not fast enough. The guy across the street said his water pipes were smoking. He had a bunch of melted wiring.
I was standing maybe fifteen feet from an aluminum carport that got hit. I still remember seeing what looked like a thousand glow worms crawling all over the carport legs. Kind of messed up my brain for a couple of weeks, like that old commercial, the frying eggs and your brain on drugs commercial. There was an old black handyman up on an aluminum ladder working on the carport. He came down the ladder three shades paler than when he went up. No kidding, he was a way lighter color after the lightning strike.0 -
Remember as a young soldier, being out in the field when a lightning storm blew up on us. Can recall the words of our drill sgt-
"All right girls- spread out- give God a chance to pick and choose..."0 -
I took a indirect hit from lightning as well. Damn near knocked me out and I could not stand up for a few minutes. Cooked the pallet scale I was unplugging, the tv's, the phones, and both clocks. I hurt like nothing else. 0 -
Note to self. No Pooping during a lightning storm. 0 -
I grew up around and was coached by a gentlemen who was a senior instructor and range officer at my local gunclub...
He did a presentation for a bunch of us kids involved in the scouts - I was still a weblos - at camp lenape during summer camp...
He also was a frequent guest at the local elementary school.
He had been struck by lightning 7 times - he had newspaper clippings and doctors reports and police reports and insurance documents and a letter from his file when he was discharged from the navy documenting 7 separate incidents were he was struck by lightning...
He claimed to have been hit 9 times but twice he was alone in remote areas.
He was discharged from the navy early after being struck for the third time while in uniform...
Damnedest thing you ever did hear - he claimed to be a lightning rod or lightning strike magnet - that he had met a handful of others like him - that the phenomenon was not unknown but never officially recognized...
He was a quiet and strong figure - a terrific pistol shooter and a great youth instructor and scout leader - VFW member - hunter education teacher - retired machinist.
Mike0 -
And let me tell you about Lightning Protection systems.
They don't work.
The old barns with a lightning rod on each corner was about as good as $100,000 systems I installed on new buildings.
Did a justice center/jail in Macon county,TN about 15 years ago. Had the most complicated wiring/rods/aerials/down drops/ground rods you ever seen. The lightning engineer was more concerned with what he called "ball Lightning". We had to have a upright rod every corner and along the roof lines as IF a 45 foot ball was rolling across the roof and it had to touch our rods before it touched the building.
When it was all done, he inspected and passed our work.
He did tell the owners there is still NO guarantee that it stop damages to the build. :shock:0 -
babun you are saying that lightning rods don't work? Up here on the mountain we have 2 houses that have lightning rods and 3 that don't. Nobody in 20 years has ever been hit by lightning.
I am thinking of putting lightning rods on my house but it is expensive.0 -
When we first moved into this house the lightning rod was tied into the water pipes. Having witnessed a few lightning strikes, I unhooked that sucker and threw it in the scrap metal pile.
I now have two trees higher than the roofline. away from the house.0 -
allen griggs wrote:babun you are saying that lightning rods don't work? Up here on the mountain we have 2 houses that have lightning rods and 3 that don't. Nobody in 20 years has ever been hit by lightning.
I am thinking of putting lightning rods on my house but it is expensive.
When it comes to lightning rods, let me put it this way....
Take a paper clip and bend it into a u shape. Then place it on your desk. With that bent paper clip there, I guarantee you will never have a stampede of horses run you over.
That's the same with lightning protection.
You can not "draw" a bolt to a rod instead of your house.
I have installed big dollar systems with 4/0 copper stranded wire down from roof to ground rods. A lightning bolt will fry that size wire like a McDonald's french fry.
Lightning will go where it wants to. Of cause, tall objects have a better chance of a hit.
But I have seen many strikes to the ground level objects while tall things were just a few feet away.0 -
So, babun, you have installed lightning rod systems?
The wire on neighbor's house is braided copper wire about 1/2 inch diameter, attached to a 9 foot long rod driven in to the ground.
Is this the size wire you are talking about?0 -
I have supervised {electrical foreman} many installations around the mid Tenn. area for the last 26 years. Now retired.
That 1/2" copper wire is close to what I called 4/0 gauge. It sounds like a typical lightning system. On the "better" systems all the ground rounds around the building, and there should be a lot of them, are tied together with cables to make a ground ring around the building.
A major pit fall today is very few houses have copper/metallic water pipes going to them.
So a strike anywhere on the pipe will send the voltage along the water and may not be dissipated enuff before it reaches your home.
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PS... Note the extra air terminals along the roof ridge top.... that is for the "ball lightning" effect. The spacing and hite is engineered to "dissipate" the charge before a bolt/strike happens.
In theory anyway........0 -
babun wrote:I have installed big dollar systems with 4/0 copper stranded wire down from roof to ground rods. A lightning bolt will fry that size wire like a McDonald's french fry.
I guess a lot of people just don't realize that the temperature of a bolt of lightning can reach as high as 53,540 degrees F which is about 5 times the temperature of the surface of the sun at 10,340 degrees F. No cable or surge protector can handle anything close to that.0 -
Smitty500mag wrote:babun wrote:I have installed big dollar systems with 4/0 copper stranded wire down from roof to ground rods. A lightning bolt will fry that size wire like a McDonald's french fry.
I guess a lot of people just don't realize that the temperature of a bolt of lightning can reach as high as 53,540 degrees F which is about 5 times the temperature of the surface of the sun at 10,340 degrees F. No cable or surge protector can handle anything close to that.
Not to mention the 1.21 giga watts that?ll send a delorean back to the future!0 -
Not long after the wife and I were married we were living in an old house that was struct by Lightning.. I was standing in the hall and it ran down both walls beside me and gave me 2nd degree burns on both arms,, It had a 220 electric oven and it literally blew it out of the house through a wall,, The wife was looking at me when it hit and she told everyone for years she was certain she was a widow before she had even been married a year,,burned me but the fear it put into her has lasted the last 35 years ,,she is still scared of a Thunder Storm 0
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