We had a storm to come through my area, though I didn't know it ( sound asleep 3:00 am in the morning). I had 3 calls so far with lightning striking, residences and business'. One house just got a switch plate blown off the wall, and blew a light bulb, tripped some breakers, not so bad. Another business got his computer messed up. I checked all his panels, grounds etc.. Couldn't find anything wrong, except a slightly loose hot wire on the recept. his computer was plugged into. Makes the second time he said his computer has taken a hit. One last year, and now this year. Didn't seem to hurt anything else just his computer. I'm looking to see if Seimans makes a commercial 3 phase surge protector I can put on one of the panels, like Square D does on residential panels. If anyone knows of any, I would appreciate your input. I may just end up getting one of the cheaper lightning arestors that can go on the individual circuit. Supply house told me they cost about $ 50.00 or so. Of course I told him nothing could be guranteed to keep lightning from damaging things. He already has surge protectors etc. ahead of his computer equipment, but didn't seem to help.
I had another residential call today from apparantly the same storm. When I went to her house, she proceeded to take me from room to room showing me the damage. Her house has plaster on the walls, with the metal lathe behind it. Somehow the lightning followed the metal lathe and came out numerous places throughout her house. Blew holes in the plaster, smoked up some places around her metal windows, stirred up the "sediment" in her commode, destroyed several mobile phones, cable equipment, door bell transformer, motor in her kitchen hood fan, and more I'm sure, that I'm missing. I checked the service, and found that there was no ground rod or ground wire there at the meter. Looked at the inside panel, which was back to back to the meter, and found the ground wire going into the attic, then back down in the wall of the bathroom ( looked like the wall behind the commode). don't know where it went from there, unless it went under the house to a water pipe, ( hadn't got that far under her house yet). I did have to go under her house to change the transformer for her doorbell, and noticed another ground wire that was attached to the water pipe, that apparantly also originates in the inside panel. I think I did see two ground wires leaving the panel. I am going back to drive her two ground rods at the meter and run the ground wire. I can only assume that the lightning ran along the ground wire, and that the metal lathe was in contact with the ground wire, probably the one going behind the commode and touching water pipes. When I go back, I will try to verify that the water pipes on truly going into the ground and have not been changed over to plastic. I didn't have time to check everything under house, after straining to hook the transformer back up, that was mounted over the gas furnace, in between the water heater and furnace, over a drain line that I was trying not to break; on a cement pad, with about 3 ft. of room, having to work in a "hot box", with a bunch of junk all over the place, and with a barking dog, seemingly wanting to get a hold of me, not to speak of my own "personal" need to get out of there [Linked Image] Hope you know what I mean. But other than that, everything went fine [Linked Image] Oh I forgot to say about the storage room on the other side of the garage where the panel was, that was "packed" up to the ceiling where the crawl space for the attic was at, that I had to climb over to get up into the attic, ( no way my ladder could have got in there [Linked Image] I've told my wife before, that if we could write a book about our experiences in life, that we could sell it and I wouldn't have to be doing these things [Linked Image] Oh well, so goes life. Any other theories about the "path that lightning takes"? Thanks, Steve ...If I could only get the time to write that book [Linked Image]

[This message has been edited by sparkync (edited 04-14-2005).]