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| Lightning Strike |
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| joeqsmith:
A few years ago some of my test equipment was damaged after one of our trees took a direct hit and it traveled down the tree into the roots where it coupled onto some of the wiring. We had another tree that it blew the bark off from one branch to the bottom of the trunk. We cut one of them down and it appears the center of one of the branches was carrying some current... Mother nature does a much better job than my transient generator. |
| cdev:
I've had that too. Twice.. I wonder if that carbonized stripe in the trees conducts electricity more, or God forbid, attracts more lightning. Just yesterday we had a big lightning storm which went right over us. It was quite dramatic. I wish that I knew more about lightning protection. In comparison to California, big lightning storms are much more frequent here in New Jersey. Strangely, there were few in the SF Bay Area, although they did happen occasionally. I have consumer grade (Belkin) surge suppressors on my computer stuff and (almost never used) TV. |
| TimFox:
Was there any pattern to the damage to your electronic equipment from that strike? (I.e., mainly in line-connected power supplies, or sensitive electrical inputs that were connected elsewhere, etc.?) |
| T3sl4co1l:
Yeh, at those currents, doesn't really even matter where the current path is! Parents had an instance a couple years ago, struck a neighbor's tree I think? Knocked out a couple devices including, what was it, a cable box and a router or two, something like that. Reasonable enough; CATV and networking cables make pretty big loops against each other, or to mains wiring, in many installations. (Which, it's an old house, wiring is everywhere.) Shouldn't have any effect on strike frequency, anyway; the moist tissue keeps the whole tree very nearly at ground potential, allowing the same electric field as a many-leafed lightning rod might. Not that that's helping put your mind at ease... :-DD Tim |
| joeqsmith:
There is a phone line, cable TV coax, AC mains and 24V sprinkler wiring underground. The sprinkler system was not plugged in but of vaporized the spark gaps and some other parts of the PCB. We have not used the copper phone lines for many years. There is a metal box that covers the junction where they feed into the house. That box was in my neighbor's yard several feet away. The coax took out my cable modem. The test equipment was all turned off and the bus strips were all off. My office has two outlets and they use the two different phases. There was enough common mode voltage between the two grounds that it took out the GPIB controllers. Nothing too bad. I made a video showing the repairs. |
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