Close call with fire

Well, i know this for a fact !


None of those things work......if lighting hits the right way its gonna fry no matter what...all those things are is an exspencive power strip....Get ya a good ground out side, that deflects the charge into the ground....!!!!


Those things are for power surges , not lighting !

Edited by thcrw739 2005-07-29 7:31 PM

Ouch! Sorry to hear that!

We don't get a lot of lightning around here, and to be honest I've never seen a power surge myself (though I did get to make $60 off a guy who's bad power bar surged out by itself and killed his power supply and motherboard). I meant to pick up some decent power bars when I was working at Best Buy but quit long before my discount kicked in

So I've been fed a line!? :+O

I'd like to know how you get a "good ground". I meant to include the following in my earlier post. My parents have lightning rods on their house (4 or 5 of them) and everything seems to be grounded properly, including the phone line. They've blown out about 4 modems since getting on the internet 5 years ago. I got them a 325VA UPS like mine to prevent lightning from getting to the CPU. Their last modem replacement came after lightning struck a tree 20 feet from the house, followed the root, blowing soil out of the ground, jumping to the nearby phone line, through the network interface (which is grounded with a copper rod going into the ground) through the house line to the computer and frying the modem circuit board. They have had to replace several answering machines from lightning in the past, too, but this time ONLY the modem blew out. Even the rest of the computer worked fine afterwards.

lightning rods, lol



you have to have a Iron rod running into the ground and a line to it running to every power / phone exst. As for the blow.......lighting is strange, wont ever strike the same way..... enless the condctor remains the same !

Yup, lightning rods. I have a picture of my folks' house somewhere. I'll have to post it on my website and provide a link, here. Some of the lightning rods still have the decorative glass globes on them. There was a turn-of-the-century barn on the adjacent property with lightning rods, too, until about 15 years ago. Apparently lightning rods don't do much to deter tornadic winds. ;+)

Ahhh... so that's why the rod at the network interface didn't work? You have to have a line running to the grounding rod at every service point?

this is correct, inless you have a ground rod and a line for each service point and then hooking each to one main ground .....


1 inch rebar works well

Edited by thcrw739 2005-07-29 8:20 PM

When lightning strikes nearby it causes the spikes that the spike suppressors are designed for. If lightning hits your wire/house etc. not much of anything helps but nature. Lightning does very strange things. Worked on a home that got hit in the tv antenna and it took out all sorts of stuff, but left other stuff alone, just depends on how it finds its way to ground.

Lightning rods are rather out dated, but not sure why :-) If you have tall trees then they make a good target, but even then can cause huge spikes. Used to do antenna work in NE and ground rods/wire were a huge must along with spark suppressors.

Luck seems to have a lot to do with it :-)

The best ground is the steel casing of a drilled well, going down to the water table.

I’m lucky, I was driving back from the store the other night and I was lightning strike a new billboard they put up the week before. It was about a block from my house. I got home and promptly turned off and unplugged all electronics. Accept for my 25 year old TV. I figured that would be safe. My electricity went out 7 times that night.

My parents' well is brick and mortar. :+/

Heaven forbid it happen to anyone here,

a direct lightning strike to an insurance company or an underwriter (in the case of UPS / surge adapter / spike protection companies) is an act of God, and isn't payable.
I was thinking specifically in the case of my friend who's local loop was struck a few years back, rather than an actual strike on the building. As thcrw739 rightly says, there's not a lot realistically available to the residential user to protect against that sort of thing.

The earthing here at my house is pretty poor, that or there's a wiring problem. Things seem to suffer sags even when you turn on the light switches, and if you run a hair dryer, the TV picture develops horizontal snow.

I know a lot of people who, at the mere hint of a storm will turn their pc's off and removed the phones. Either I'm really bad, really stupid or just aware of the odds, because I never have done that. Not once.

I will say though that in the case of this sort of protection, you need to be sure you're willing to put your money where your mouth is - BUT - you need to be sure that the supplier is too.
It was an extra £8 on just about everything on the AC side of it to go from the £25,000 to £50,000 cover and an extra £8 again to go to £100,000 cover.
Read the small print on the equipment, ensure that there are no odd get-out clauses and that you've wired it up correctly as per the guidelines.
Always fill out and post the registration card, and above all be sure to keep the paperwork. It's a good bet that a lot of people with this sort of technology in their system will lose it - something that I'm sure the underwriter will factor in in his/her musing for the vendor.
Lastly always go for a brand name, one you can trust through reviews from people who have had to make claims, and I'd advise one that has an operation and HQ within your country.

Wallythacker,

I wonder if you could make up some sort of thermistor trip switch that you could place on your UPS's on the mains side of the circuit. Have it trip the AC line if it gets too hot and let the UPS discharge cycle (hopefully cold) run its course.
May be a bit of hassle for you, but if it helps you sleep better at night...

C:amie, I had a similar thought. I was going to wire thermstors to the devices then into my security system which notifies me wherever I am. I like your idea better. It's less work. Maybe I'll do both if I really can't stop worrying.

For the record, I had an APC (best brand?) catch fire where I worked back in 96. Yes, it was beyond all rated environmental temperatures but it chose to burn rather than shut down. So no brand makes me totally comfortable. I hope that UL/CSA has done their homework when they grant approval to these things.

yep.. APC might not be the best brand in the case UPS... i heard similar stories from one of my friends (he experienced it himself, didn't just hear it from someone else!). that's why he prefers other brands.. but definitely not no-brand ones. they could be crap too.

Lightning is indeed strange. I've seen it hit 4 times in my life, which I guess is pretty rare for most people who don't look for it.

1. Sitting at a railroad crossing, it hit the tracks right in front of us as kids. It was so bright I saw stars for about 5 minutes. Never will forget the smell of ozone. Scared my dad so much he dumped the clutch and killed our 53 Chevy.

2. Saw it hit the roof of my metal storage barn from 100 yards away. Got there and there were scorch marks and a 3 inch hole in the corner. My cordless drill was actually tossed from the charging cradle and it melted the grip and the charger. Other things plugged in were totally undamaged. Even a plugged in transistor radio wasn't hurt any.

3. Saw it hit a marching troop movement once in the military across the street from me. Despite immediate efforts in CPR, we were unable to save the lives of two young men. Irony was that I was a Cardiac Care Nurse down in Texas for a medical conference on ACLS and have participated in thousands of cardiac arrests.

4. I was sailing Stars in the Gulf of Mexico in a regatta, and on the third leg of a modified Olympic course, we sailed into a squall. An old star's (wooden boat, I was in a fiberglass hull) mast got hit, and it looked like the end of a cigar halfway up that old wooden mast. Yet I was less then 50 feet away, along with a dozen other boats, and was untouched. We even had an aluminum mast, but nature chose the wooden one instead. The team was thrown into the water from the blast, but were unharmed other than one lost a shoe.

Okay, enough war tales....Rich

well i've never seen one so close (erm, knock on wood)... so what does that make if 4 times is already rare enough?