House hit by Lightning!

[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.