Lightning Damage??

[rogerwa]

WE had a weird storm here last night. It wasn't severe but it was very electrical. I woke up today to thunder and lightning and one particular crack that we both saw and heard at the same time.

It wasn't until later that I found we had some odd damage. First, one of our phone lines went out. We have three phone lines and DSL coming in on two separated underground feeds. The original line is out.

Second, I found some other odd things. My garage door opener would not respond to the controls. I found this out when my kids came home from school and were locked out (Mom was running an errand).

I had installed an antenna on the eaves of my garage last weekend and hooked it up to a signal amplifier. This antenna fed my home built MythTv DVR (two antenna feeds into three tuner cards) and my TV set. I found my DVR all screwed up. The Video card would no longer feed the svideo signal to the TV and I suspect one of the tuner cards is toast as well.

On top of that, the signal went to crap from my antenna and i deduced (by removing it) that the apmplifier is toast as well.

Here is a diag to make it simpler:

I inspected the perimeter of the house for damage in the case the somehow I had missed a direct lightning strike and did not find any.

What would cause all this damage?? A static discharge on the antenna? or a big line voltage spike?? ideas? I do not believe the garage and the TV/DVR are on the same circuit. Also is there a way to protect myself from this??

Very weird.

 

[luckyinkentucky]

Re: Lightning Damage??

Lightning does some weird things. That's what makes it unpredictable.

Back in 2004 we had a devastating storm come through the area. My home was one of the ones to be hit by 70 mph straight line winds, and a series of severe concentrated lightning strikes.

I remember vividly to this day watching lightning arc between the two wall lights in my bathroom, and make a bolt through the hallway for about 10 feet, and it disappeared into the light that was hanging from the ceiling. It completely fried my PC at the time, and almost melted everything but the video card which is still working to this day. One 48" flat screen tv was caught in the mix, and it arced lightning from itself to my wife's wall lamps which were 20 feet away. All the time only tripping 3 breakers.

The next thing we knew our power line had been hit, and we had a power line laying across the hood of my truck, and we were running off of single phase power. Upon inspection from my father, a licensed master electrician, we found that all of the wiring in the house was to code, and still in good working order.

To this day we have never had such a storm, and hope we never do again. With all of the lightning going off around us I was wondering if I was going to make it out of that alive. That just goes to show you how unpredictable nature and electricity are.

After trying to have my father explain this to us as to why the lightning or electricity acted as it did all he could tell me was that electricity takes the fastest path to the earth. It will literally seem alive and seek out that path whenever the need arises.

 

[orion25]

Re: Lightning Damage??

If you want true protection be prepared to spend some serious $$$$. You can get Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) that will protect youe entire house but plan on spending tens of thousands. Or you can get good surge protectors, not the $10.99 wal mart power strips to protect your major electronics. I have an APC 1500va UPS on my main computer, monitor, cable modem and router. My plasma is connected to a belkin 800va ups as is my receiver, dvr , PS2 and DVD player. The reason I use computer UPS solutions for these components has nothing to do with the battery back up that allows them to continue working in the event of a short power failure. It has to do with the Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR). AVR basically cleans up the voltage you get from the power company. It really helps in brownouts and small voltage spikes. In addition the UPS units have very good surge protection. I would much rather my $100 Belkin UPS get killed by a lightning strike than my $1300 LG Plasma.

The other computers are plugged into a Monster surge protector that has a very high Joule rating (cannot remember what it is right now).

Anyway, I think it is time to file a claim with your homeowners insurance. That is if what you lost is valued high enough to justify the deductible - I have a rider on my homeowners that covers my computers with no deductible..............

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Lightning Damage??

There are lightning suppression/absorption systems (or something like that) you can add on to your main electrical panel these days that keep your household appliances from being toasted. Maybe its just a big super sensitive additional breaker...I'm not sure.
I don't that much about them but I remember seeing them on one of those 'This Old House' kind of shows. Very interesting. An electrician would be the guy to know and ask. From what I recall installation was not that much and they are becoming more common these days.

 

[rwise]

Re: Lightning Damage??

if you see no burned places on your electrnics, you may want to remove all power from it for a day or so and try it again. I have seen electronics become *overcharged* by nearby but not direct lightning stricks, once whatever was *overcharged* returns to normal it works again. My motorolla tv is one, every time I get a nearby strick I have to unplug it for 60 seconds to get the remote to control it again, motorolla says its something with its cpu.

 

[_brad_]

Re: Lightning Damage??

Along this same topic, everyone please remember that any UPS/surge protector realiistically only offeres full protection for 2-3 years. This is its life span; after 3 years your protection droppes.

I read this off a UPS manufactures web site.


So replace them every 2-3 years. Period.

 

[orion25]

Re: Lightning Damage??

On most models you can just replace the battery. The batt is what takes the force of a surge anyway............

 

[boling]

Re: Lightning Damage??

Looks like your antenna ground may not be bonded to earth or building ground. Lightning will usually take the shortest path to ground that handles all the current, in some cases multiple paths are used.

 

[rogerwa]

Re: Lightning Damage??

The antenna is actually inside the garage and there was no evidence of a lightening hitting anything. I think it must have just been a big power spike. Teh good news is that the tuner card is not toast. It just didn't have a good signal. Once I replaced the pre-amp it was fine..