House hit by Lightning!

[HorsehairBraider]

Wow - our house got hit by lightning last week! It happened when we had just walked inside. There was a huge noise - like a large-caliber gun going off - and a huge very bright flash. We were not hurt, but my computer sure was... It also blew out the main breaker and damaged the rest of the breakers. The main was sort of welded together... Yikes! There was also a small piece of the siding blown off, the phone line was hit very hard, and the DSL modem was actually blown apart (they accused us of dropping it when we brought it back in!).

We were lucky though. No one was hurt, the house did not catch on fire, and an amazing amount of stuff still works. My computer was plugged in to one of those huge battery surge protectors, but I guess there's only so much those things can take! I kept thinking, if only I had one of those little netbooks, I would have been able to work these last 10 days. As it is, I am using an old computer on its last legs, and my computer (which I only bought in November of 08!) is lying in little pieces on a tech's desk while he seeks to repair it. With luck I'll have it back in another week.

So two questions - first, anyone else ever have a run-in with lightning? I'd be interested in your story if you don't mind sharing. Second, anyone else have a netbook and if so what kind do you suggest? I want one with a LONG battery life so I don't have to plug it in very often! I'm scared to plug stuff in now!

Edited June 4, 2009 by HorsehairBraider

[badger]

I'm so glad to hear no one was hurt.

Other things can be fixed.

All the best,

Badger

[Johanna]

Yes Ma'am, lightning is a big problem in this house. I use a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) which sounds like what you had. It has a car battery type feature that levels out the brown outs we have, too- makes it easier on the comps. If we lose power I have a few minutes to save my work, then if I'm not home, it will put my comps into an orderly shutdown if the power doesn't resume. I fried several motherboards before I got a UPS. Like you noted, even a good UPS can be overpowered by a direct strike.

Look on www.tigerdirect.com and www.newegg.com before you make any purchases. That will give you a good idea of what features are available, and what reasonable prices for them are. TD has customer reviews that seem pretty reasonable to me.

Sorry about your stuff, but glad your family and house are okay. We have 9 lightning rods on the roof. That should have been my first clue when I bought the house.

Johanna

[HorsehairBraider]

Hey, thanks Johanna - I've been reading those sites, very helpful!

NINE lightning rods?! I grew up in OH and remember the storms... I can just imagine!

[Doug C]

You might check out the Eee PC HE1000 by Asus. I think that is the 10 inch model. I've been researching these machines too. I beleive they claim a 9hr battery life.

This model is available on Amazon for around $380-$390. you can upgrade the Ram to 2 Gig for another $25.

Doug

[Jordan]

Lectricity is a dangerous thing! I had an incident in socal where county maint. backed into a power pole and live wires hit our service lines just right to cause the electricity to flow through our house blew out every appliance every lightbulb exploded fried the service panel and most of the wiring! worst was that in the old days they used the gas line as a ground! being so old the power surge put pinholes in the line all the way to the street and the gas company sniffers were going bananas a block away! It was a week before xmas and we had to stay in a motel a real drag. Dang county was not held to account due to some fancy lawyering even though county inmates were driving the truck!

[Hilly]

During the summer, I work for DelMonte farms. I work on a harvest crew, driving heavy farm machinery (harvesters). I once saw a guy driving the tractor with a dump cart touch a power wire with the corner of the cart. Never believe you're safe in a vehicle just because the tires are made of rubber! The electricity went straight through the steel belts in the tires, and burned about a million little holes right through the tires, which are quite thick. It also fried the computer in the tractor, and most of the wires. The guy driving was okay, but only because he was very lucky.

That guy has since moved on to a different job, and now I'm the "guy" in the tractor. I'm always real careful around power wires, but being the tallest thing on a square mile of ground during a electrical storm is very scary at times.

The rest of the year, I drive school bus, and I've been seeing kids carrying small notebooks around a lot lately. I guess Walmarx is selling these little computers for around $200. Might want to check them out.

[yehagirl]

I have made a habit of unplugging my surge protector (that has everything plugged into it) every time I turn my computer off. I have heard of too many people who have had all their stuff fried, even plugged into the surge protector. The stuff they did nto have plugged into the surge protector was fine!

[Billy P]

Hello everbody, this is the first time I've been on here in over a month. A squirrel got into a substation and shorted it out. When the power co. got it replaced they had to cut the power all over the system, at least where we're at. When they cut the power back on it caused a abnormal power surge and burnt up my computer. I have a surge protector, but sometimes no matter what you do it will get some things. My old puter' was almost 5 years old and had seen a lot of use so we got a new one. Just hooked it up today, 1st. thing after getting hooked back up with my ISP, getting back on Leatherworker.net. I sure missed ya'll Billy P

[superchute]

look for new laptop and found a nice one at best buy about 600

Russ

[Go2Tex]

We had a pretty good thunder boomer a while back and a house not too far from here got hit with lightning. Made me re-think this whole lightning thing. I never realized houses got hit that much. Makes you wonder why there aren't building codes for lightning rods on every house... I mean, they have codes for everything else, why not that?

[HorsehairBraider]

We had a pretty good thunder boomer a while back and a house not too far from here got hit with lightning. Made me re-think this whole lightning thing. I never realized houses got hit that much. Makes you wonder why there aren't building codes for lightning rods on every house... I mean, they have codes for everything else, why not that?

Because they don't work... that's why. (Remember, Johanna's house has NINE! And it still gets hit...) Here's a link to an article about it: linky. This is the conclusion - basically that they don't work well. I've read other articles that claim the effectiveness is very limited, to about 5 sq ft or so. You would need a lot of rods to cover the average house. And even then, some believe there is just no stopping a downward-striking lightning bolt... if one of these bad boys wants to hit your house, there is not a lot you can do about it. Sadly.

As an addendum, a lady just wrote me to do some custom work. This weekend, she had SEVEN HORSES hit and killed by a lightning bolt. Now sure, I've lost money, time and so on - but at least no one was hurt, and none of the animals were either. It could have been a heck of a lot worse.