BUM
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
My North Carolina retirement nest had a quick and fierce visit from mama nature last week. The house is a 4 family "island style" which means ground floor garages. This is practical because every so many years when the tide surges its common to have a few feet of salt water in the garage. No long term disaster really because a few hours later the tide goes out and things slowly get back to normal. This type of weather anomaly I'm equipped to deal with. Lightning is a whole different story. The heck of it is, its rarely ever a real problem. When it manifests itself as a problem -- what the hell-- it probably won't ever happen again. Lightning isn't supposed to strike TWICE in the same place, right?
Wrong.
Within a few days we had multiple lightning strikes in the immediate area (less then 100 yds.). This is the discovered damage so far:
Four fried televisions
Three toasty garage door openers.
One well done fax machine.
One exploded electric wall receptacle.
All this just in our building. Reports are trickling in from the neighbors and one local appliance repair guy says he has no more space in the shop for tv's, "two hundred is my limit".
So what to do. I'm a reasonably intelligent, research-everything-to-pieces kinda guy. Hell I used to sell transient voltage surge suppression components and circuits to the high end computer industry. The first step was to get a refresher on the whole problem. I found this to be a helpful site:
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/surge/surge.htm
Lock the doors, they's a'comin' in through the windows! The phenominal (spooky) thing about lightning is that it can get inside any way it wants. It can visit via electrical wire, coax, telephone wire, heating system (plenty of metal there) a combination of the above, or just through the air.
In the old days we were told to unplug the tv and remove the antenna connection (remember that clothspin - like contraption?). That was all there was to it! Not so today. Now we need to unplug tv, computer, monitor, fax , phones, anything with a dangling antenna like garage door openers, cordless phones, atomic clocks, and probably anything that uses a remote control. During storm season I might need to do this daily--- if I'm home. Don't think so might as well live in a cave.
Certainly a heavy duty whole house solution is required. Probably with some specific circuits being backed up.
As I remember you don't squash the surge, you send it to ground. Most products on the market use multiple metal oxide varistors (MOVs). We made tons of sales by showing customers that the typical lightning spike could easily damage devices downstream before the slow MOV ever knew what was happening. But that was 10 years ago.
How about any of you materials science guys out there. I'm sure improvements have been made. Tranzorbs used to be gold standard for switching speed.
Enough of the tech details. What I'm really researching is:
Is the sky really falling? Do nothing is my usual approach.
What protection solution is best? Active switching like Raychem tranzorbs or passive mov's or a combo?
If this topic creates any sizzle I'll post the outcome. The results may be shocking.
BUM
Wrong.
Within a few days we had multiple lightning strikes in the immediate area (less then 100 yds.). This is the discovered damage so far:
Four fried televisions
Three toasty garage door openers.
One well done fax machine.
One exploded electric wall receptacle.
All this just in our building. Reports are trickling in from the neighbors and one local appliance repair guy says he has no more space in the shop for tv's, "two hundred is my limit".
So what to do. I'm a reasonably intelligent, research-everything-to-pieces kinda guy. Hell I used to sell transient voltage surge suppression components and circuits to the high end computer industry. The first step was to get a refresher on the whole problem. I found this to be a helpful site:
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/housing/surge/surge.htm
Lock the doors, they's a'comin' in through the windows! The phenominal (spooky) thing about lightning is that it can get inside any way it wants. It can visit via electrical wire, coax, telephone wire, heating system (plenty of metal there) a combination of the above, or just through the air.
In the old days we were told to unplug the tv and remove the antenna connection (remember that clothspin - like contraption?). That was all there was to it! Not so today. Now we need to unplug tv, computer, monitor, fax , phones, anything with a dangling antenna like garage door openers, cordless phones, atomic clocks, and probably anything that uses a remote control. During storm season I might need to do this daily--- if I'm home. Don't think so might as well live in a cave.
Certainly a heavy duty whole house solution is required. Probably with some specific circuits being backed up.
As I remember you don't squash the surge, you send it to ground. Most products on the market use multiple metal oxide varistors (MOVs). We made tons of sales by showing customers that the typical lightning spike could easily damage devices downstream before the slow MOV ever knew what was happening. But that was 10 years ago.
How about any of you materials science guys out there. I'm sure improvements have been made. Tranzorbs used to be gold standard for switching speed.
Enough of the tech details. What I'm really researching is:
Is the sky really falling? Do nothing is my usual approach.
What protection solution is best? Active switching like Raychem tranzorbs or passive mov's or a combo?
If this topic creates any sizzle I'll post the outcome. The results may be shocking.
BUM