House hit by lightning

[rbstern]

Earlier this month, we had some intense electrical storms roll through North Georgia. One of them was kind enough to grace our house with a bolt of lightning.

As best we can tell, it hit a corner of our semi-attached garage. It broke a foundation wall, blew cement siding and trim off one corner (found in the yard, 20' from the building), dented gutters and downspouts, blew out some exterior motion lights, and put a 2" hole in the fascia next to one of the light fixtures.

But wait, there's more. Much more. The garage lighting circuit wiring was completely destroyed. The hot lead was completely unsheathed from it's insulation. Made it look like the wire had two grounds, rather than hot/neutral/ground. Pretty much every piece of sensitive electronic gear in the house was destroyed. Home theater equipment. Hubs. Routers. A few LED light bulbs here and there. The light switches nearest to the garage were blown out of the wall, charred, with the cover plates in pieces nearby. Alarm system completely destroyed. Anything with a hard ethernet connection was toast. 4 PCs, couple of TVs, PS5, etc. And, to add insult to injury: The coffee maker bought it.

Two of three vehicles parked nearby had their ECUs fried. One is in the shop now; when it comes back, we'll have the other one towed.

We were VERY lucky and VERY grateful there was no fire. All six smoke detectors (3 alarm system, 3 house wired) were destroyed. The boom and house shaking woke everyone up, so the smoke detectors didn't have a role to play, but made me realize it's a failure scenario that demands an unwired/battery powered detector.

Electrician was here for 4 days, checking wiring and pulling new wire where necessary. Alarm system vendor was here for a day. Pretty much every sensor, detector, panel, power supply, etc., burnt. All replaced.

Pad mounted power company transformer had to be replaced, as it was feeding the house with 273 volts when the fuses were replaced. Local EMC was terrific. They had a new transformer in place in less than 1/2 a day.

The telco's router was blown apart and burned. It even burned the UPS it was attached to. Current came to it via the ethernet cables, which looked like fried spaghetti.

We're getting it all cleaned up. Nobody was hurt. Insurance company (Auto Owners) is treating us right. In the end, we lost some work time (we work from home), but the important stuff, people, are all okay.

 

[ChuckT]

Good to hear that all is being repaired!

 

[jcummins]

How or could it be avoid... Via?

You know that could happen to any of us.

I've had lightning damage too, but minor compared to this.

 

[Jstpssng]

That's no way to be woken up! Glad to hear that nobody was hurt, and that you are getting things back to normal.

 

[Root Cause]

Yikes, good to know that no one was harmed in the making of this catastrophy.
Good point about detached smoke detectors.
Take care.

 

[MoKelly]

Mother Nature is unstoppable.

3 weeks ago there was a lightning storm at the farm. Loud booms and such for 45 minutes. But nothing that seemed too close.

Next day - garage door opener was dead and alarm had a “cannot communicate” code.

Both panels were fried and needed to be replaced. The garage door I did myself but the alarm was beyond my abilities.

Both were on surge protectors that failed to work.

MoKelly

 

[Bearsixty7]

A friend/co-worker that used to live just a couple miles from us here, house was hit. Scariest thing he told me was sheetrock screws or nails that were on the wall where it hit had blown across the room and embedded in the opposite wall! I never thought of that being a possibility.
He said the Fire department came in with a heat sensor and scanned all the walls for any heat signatures in case there was something still smoldering.

 

[Torvy]

We have a very large flag pole in our back yard in the city. we still think lightning hit the pole and somehow added to the sprinkler system and then got the controller. Every few years, a strike would take out our pool controller and sprinkler system...blowing the transformer across the garage. 1) those little pool controllers are pricy. 2) We got a whole house surge protection system installed. It cost less than one pool controller and if it fails, they pay to repair electronics.

We have not had a problem since...

 

[ponytug]

Sorry to hear about the damage, and I am glad that everyone is safe.

I have been through a close hit only once, but the amount of damage is amazing.

One comment on surge suppressors; they are designed to take the edge off a surge or spike in voltage, for a few nanoseconds. They are designed to take a voltage spike from a hit miles away. They aren't capable of doing anything for a direct hit. Many folks are annoyed when the surge suppressor didn't work for a direct hit, but it often can't as the ground potential is going up, just like everything else.

If you are in an area likely to have a direct hit, you really are in the market for a lightning rods and a lightning arrestor.

One great reason to have offline backups!

All the best,

Peter

 

[mikester]

How or could it be avoid... Via?

You know that could happen to any of us.

I've had lightning damage too, but minor compared to this.

Short answer is NO.

Our insurance gave as a discount for adding a whole home surge suppressor after our strike but even that won't save you from a direct hit. Stray current can and will go anywhere.

 

[dodge man]

My first thought was the damage wasn’t to bad then you said the coffee maker got it, the horror. All joking aside it sounds like you are getting things fixed, glad there was no fire.

 

[Alan W.]

Yes glad no one was hurt. You never know how a strike will react.
I have seen the results of quite a few strikes and all were different. Some very violent with explosive damage and others more subtle with a lot of unseen damage.

 

[oosik]

Good that no one was hurt. Like you indicated - insurance can replace the remainder. My house has never been hit. Had a strike atop one of my Ponderosa pines. Started a fire right at the top. Burned/smoldered for two days.

Saw a power pole with transformer get hit. Violent explosion with resulting fire. Went out on its own - before the fire dept got there.

 

[kenmbz]

Lightning took out one of my poplars. We had to take it down, too much damage and started to rot.

Glad you made it out ok, why you have insurance. Amazing amount of damage, but being unhurt is so important.
Seems like your insurance is working with you, and getting brand new shiny wires.
Maybe add some lightning rods away from house to help redirect?

 

[cjoffutt]

We had lightning hit our house a couple years ago. Strike originated at a large Ash tree 20' from the house, down it, and into the LP gas line. Followed the gas line to the house entrance, blew the Hardi siding to pieces there.

Ended up taking out the fridge, tv, microwave, and some other misc items. Lucky it didn't go back to the LP tank and make a giant mess out of everything.

 

[check]

We had a lightning strike on a power pole near our cottage. Took out a bunch of equipment of one neighbor, and damaged more than one generator. All we had was a tripped main breaker, and the whole house surge protector seemed to take the hit. I guess it worked well! But it did die and needed replacing.

 

[Jstpssng]

I generally enjoy a good thunder and lightening storm, but not while I’m in it. One summer I was renting a place and every storm seemed to be right overhead. I spent one storm camped out in the middle of the house, staying away from the windows.
The next morning I was running water to do dishes and had my hands in the dishwater when all of a sudden I heard a sound like an arc welder going off. I wasn’t long pulling my hands out of the water... the submersible pump had a surge protector which must have done it’s job, but tripped the next morning when the pump kicked on.
I’ve lost 3 phones and a phone line surge protector to lightening in the last few years. I haven’t been able to find a replacement for the latter. Oddly enough it hasn’t hit my router, which is plugged into the same phone line. I saw the first phone get hit; waking me out of a dead sleep when the lightening hit.

 

[ponytug]

The issue with direct or near hits is the magnitude of the energy. A typical lightning bolt runs between 5,000A to 200,000A and voltages vary from 40,000V to 120,000V. With a five microsecond burst (short bolt), that's 11kWh (running ten microwaves for an hour) and most lightning has multiple exchanges. No wonder trees explode from the steam and plasma produced. Look at all of the damage to @rbstern's house.

Just to pick on the voltage end of things, that is three to ten thousand times higher than your wall voltage, which makes it easy for the lightning to induce currents and voltages in any wire or metal, anywhere close to the bolt, and that makes it so easy to fry modern, low voltage, electronics.

Surge protectors are for distant, not nearby hits. Lightning rods help, but only help, things out, and they require really good grounding systems.

We recently lost the ground on our power pole transformer from a lightning hit miles away (4? 6? Miles away). That's six gauge copper, and not from a direct hit, and the surge took out grounds over miles of other poles even farther away from the lightning strike. (How do I know? The power company had to replace transformers along another three miles of road.)

All the best,

Peter

 

[CobyRupert]

^This.
Is the corner of the garage where it hit also the corner where your overhead electrical service attaches?
Sounds like the bolt got into your electrical system and used it’s ground to get to earth. Like trying to send 10,000 gpm down a garden hose. Pressure is going to build and spill out to everting connected.
I’d check your service ground to make sure that didn’t get fried.

If you’d had lighting rods and a lot more ground rods, it would of helped. But would it have saved everything? Probably not, hard to say, but probably would of reduced damage. A bolt whose electro-magnetic field takes out the ECU of a car in the garage is pretty powerful.

 

[ruffdog]

Many times a lightning strike will do some strange stuff. If it can jump 5000 feet to touch your house, our little gadgets mostly don't have a chance. I have my antenna tower grounded with a rod and a 40' lookout tower with a re-rod ladder top to bottom. I can only hope that lightning will take the path that I choose.