Dangers Of Electrical Storms

i have a monster cable surge protector up to $100000 is what it will inshure up to i wont use any thing but that surge protector paid $200 had a storm here in syracuse ny a few years back and it saved my comp my projector stereo pretty much my wholew entertainment center love it

i have a monster cable surge protector up to $100000 is what it will inshure up to i wont use any thing but that surge protector paid $200 had a storm here in syracuse ny a few years back and it saved my comp my projector stereo pretty much my wholew entertainment center love it

i had a monster cable surge protector guarenteed up to $100,000 and my house was hit bye lightning and so were the power lines and i have to say i had no problems with monster cable replacing my computer monitor tv and stereo including my $1300 infinity speakers and my $1800 bose sourround sound setup the only think they wouldnt replace was my dam dvd player wich i understood cause it was pluged into a nother surge protector pluged into the monster cable one

im safe from phone. I have a wireless network to the dsl.

I think, after reading these horror stories, I'm going to invest in some better protection...I've got a 220/110 power converter to the wall, and a surge protector between that and my computer...Never had any problems...I want an Uninteruptable Power Supply...Uhm, a little off topic here, but, why did "countermods" feel the need to post the same thing 3 times?

i gonna invest in a backup powersupply

Regardless of the protection I have, I unplug my computer if there are lightening. So far I've been lucky with only one fried 56k modem (also killed satellite reciever at the same time). Considering my first computer was a PET, that's a hell of a long time with no trouble till a couple years ago with that 56k modem.

Lightning struck near here TWICE in the past month. The tv I was watching lost signal and flickered. All the computers except my dads rebooted. Since then we got 2 more UPS systems, a cable surge protector for the input line and a few more heavy duty general purpose surge protectors. I think they installed a cable surge protector on the box outside along with the filter.

So far we haven't had any fatalities. Just rebooted computers, thankfully.

There is nothing like having a storm roll in in a matter of minutes. Get really bad really fast then strike near your house making everything shake, lights flicker, tv flicker, computers reboot and everything else turn off/on in the house. The ensuing panic to unplug everything that followed was priceless. The storm passed through as fast as it rolled in without another near strike.

JT

ookabooka said:

oh not really. I Have a network of 1 million Kodak Camra Capacitors hooked up in parrallel to a 60 foot rod on the roof of my house. I told the zoning board it was a radio antanae Anyways my capacitors are capable of hodling 1.47 KF (KiloFarads) or 14.7 million Joules. That is hooked to a series of car batteries I use as a buffer and some more capacitors and transistors to create a 110 V 60HZ AC current. Then those are hooked into a kmart brand surge protector just incase. I once got struck by lightning and powered my computer for days. Lightning wants to help your computer, you just have to let it.

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Parallel? Won't your capacitors get fried? Wouldn't you need them in series-parallel since there's massive voltage going to them? Pardon my forgetting everything I learned in electrical engineering...

Oh, and just collect power when power prices are low, and use it when they go up...

This post reminded me that I need to see about getting my APC UPS replaced... It sort of flipped out (constant beeping and red light flashing) when I turned on my system (actualy, this was like right after I built my new system) I thought my power supply had shorted out or something

I'm still not sure what happened, but even after trying to reset it multiple times it still refuses to work. Unfortunatly I can't find the receipt (I got it as a gift), and APC says they need the receipt for them to warranty it. So, I'm not sure what to do.

Try that UPS on a smaller, less powerful system. Maybe your new system is drawing too much?

I finally learned the hard way.

This past Thursday we got one hell of a storm that lasted for several hours (wed night/thurs morning).. I have always considered myself at least cautious enough to stop when it gets REAL bad, but for the most part the storm was a light and sound show with not much actually near us...

WEll, we got one really close bolt, and I shrugged it off.. A second, very loud bolt knocke dout power for a split second, and I had to reset my BIOS after that one.. I left the PC off after that.. Well 30 minutes go by withouth much of anything so I think, OK time to try and find those O/C settings (partially unlocked chip via 8RDA+'s finicky bios) I had... Ooops !

A few minutes later I was covering my ears in pain as a bolt struck, what I thought at the time was close but not that close, the power didn't go out but my PC did.. It did not want to come back on...

When it was all over I learned the bolt had struck our tallest tree in the back/parking area of the property and did some pretty visible damage..

I am not sure how the charge reached my computer because the damage was strange.. I lost my motherboard via capacitors, we lost the ethernet port on the cable modem, we lost ports on our router (the traces were burned off in one section) my mother lost a motherboard in her PC also.

The damage seemed to be network related, which is very strange to me.. It was like a surge somehow came through the network lines or something but left everything else alone.. The cable modem and router would both still turn on, and the modem even seemed to aquire a signal (though remained offline) and work normally (router too) except for the ethernet ports of course.. My mother had no visible damage to her board, with mine bleeding out from several places..

Can anyone explain what exactly may have taken place ? I am very curous to know, especially for the sake of simply learning..

I want to invest a few well earned bucks in protection down the road, but I am not sure what I would need to do to protect myself appropriately.. Is there any reasonable way to protect yourself from a lightning strike, or surge related to one?? I know the best way is to not be on the PC but putting that aside ? Right now the best I think I could manage is to purchase an UPS with voltage regulation, and of course some ports for COAX and CAT5 would be nice too (anyone know if coax protection interferes with cable modems?)..

I see rating for joules and such but I have to wonder if anything can really protect you from such a strike/surge in the long run - anything the common man could afford anyway. Input ?

Only good thing to come out of this was an upgrade from my pretty old stuff (save the ram would I carried over) to an A64 3000+ (939) and EP-9NPAJ motherboard + MSI Geforce 6800.. Good times ahead!

p.s
http://www.oldskoolgames.com/pics/9-24-05/lightning-1.JPG
http://www.oldskoolgames.com/pics/9-24-05/lightning-2.JPG
http://www.oldskoolgames.com/pics/9-24-05/lightning-3.JPG
http://www.oldskoolgames.com/pics/9-24-05/lightning-5.JPG

Can anyone explain what exactly may have taken place ? I am very curous to know, especially for the sake of simply learning..

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Static discharge doesn't need to be direct to do damage, the proxmity can often destroy all the electronics in the house.

My PC's modem got fried long ago even though the entire phone line was underground. My guess was that the lightening hit the satellite dish, blew the reciever out, and the discharge travelled through the phone line to blow my modem out. You might have had something similiar. Was the tree near something like phone line or power line?

Yea our power line runs pretty close to another powerline that runs over our property (closer to the tree) to the building next to us. They both share the same pole, and also share the pole with our coaxial line from the cable co.

reason enough to be afraid? a direct hit to a light fixture. this was a power supply for an expensive *** access point for our wireless service at work. needless to say, it stopped working. it was charred and had a funny smell to it, strangely like maple syrup and... ammonia? an odd combo but it smelled lol.

I use a grounding switch at the location where the cable enters the house. Switch one way and the cable is connected to the router. Switch the other way and the router is grounded and disconnected from the cable drop to the pole.

This past spring lightning struck a tree in my front yard and went through the phoneline, catching my house on fire for a little until my stepdad got it out. Well it ruined his old emachines system, it would just come up to a blue screen when turned on. That monitor was also dead. The modem inside was fried. Then up in my room I lost my 21" CRT monitor and also a modem I don't know how the monitor got killed, since the electricity was through the phones, but I'm thinking that the amount of static in the air just killed it. Well anyways, insurance paid for it all anyway. Still was a bad loss.

Once I was looking out my window during a t-storm. Then everything went white. So white that all I saw was bright bright white, nothing else. My entire world was white. Next came a very loud crack, the white faded, and I saw a good chunk of a large tree that was 10 feet from the window fall to the ground. It was probably 80-150 pounds worth of tree that got cut off. That was during the night. Next day outside I took a look at the aftermath. The lightning had sliced the ~7" thick major branch just as clean as if somebody sawed it off perfectly. BTW here's a fun thing to do in pitch dark. Grab a blanket and rub your hair with it, then run your fingers over it to generate static discharge. You should see green mini-lightning.

badvector said:

*edit - On a side note, cable will conduct electricity. The small sattelite dishes use a small amount of voltage to power the LNB on the dish. How do I know you ask? While climbing antenna pole to get on roof to run cable and so as not to fall and break my neck.......I stuck the cable in my mouth so I would have both hands free.

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Hey only one way to find out

I normally dont unplug my pc's durning storms. I run a webserver thoe so its always on... but my gaming rig i disconnect from the world durning bad storms.. to much money invested into it to loose it all.

Grounding is mans best attempt to prevent the un preventable. If it want's in bad enough it's coming in.