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Lightning
Harold in CR:
Thanks for that latest info, Mary. I just pulled the outlet and looked it over very carefully, including inside the plastic wall box. Everything looks perfectly clean and OK. I will install more ground rods in that configuration you posted earlier.
Down here, the ground rods sold are 6' long and extremely cheap quality. I had to pick through 3 different ones to find one that had copper covering all the steel. ::) The clamps are steel. I imported brass clamps to redo the rods at the house. At the power company I worked at, we had threaded rods and brass drive couplings. Purpose was to get 3 of the 8' rods driven deep into the sandy ground. Sometimes it was difficult to get 1 totally driven down. Here, they are just a smooth rod with a hammered point.
SparWeb:
Harold,
Just want to wish your wife a full recovery. She was lucky to have you there.
Lightning goes where it wants to. There's no reasoning with it.
We humans can only make pitiful efforts to persuade it to stay away from one thing, by sacrificing another.
Reminds me: I need to add a lightning arrester on the broadband internet antenna I just put on my house.
clockmanFRA:
Just a personnel observation over the past 10 years here in Normandy, France.
Thunder storms are normal here every year and strikes on the ground are common.
Interestingly I used to disconnect everything, and think 'if the wind turbines are going to get it they are going to get it'.
We have Sheep with a battery operated electric fence, 4 strand type, normally around our properties with about a 2 mile run.
The first time, Just before a lightning storm got here, I noticed the sheep fence was shorting out all over the place at the top end of the field. I went over and looked and the short sparks were jumping a good distance to grass tips and other vegetation that were normally way beyond short out range.
The atmosphere was incredibly humid and those big rain drops were starting to fall, so I ran for shelter. We can see the rain coming on the other side of the valley.
I Stopped turned round and BAM! the next door field apple tree got it, the next instance my sheep electric fence was no longer sparking.
I therefore conclude that my sheep fence is discharging, at a very local level, the ionization ground layer, so the lightning goes elsewhere, well that's my theory.
Seems to do it every year or so.
Any one else observe the battery electric fence phenomenon.?
Also here in France its regs to have a 5ft long 3/4 inch diameter copper earth rod driven into the ground for every building with electrical 230vac supply. So possibly a reason why there are not many strikes on buildings here.
Just my 2 penny worth.
DanG:
Before a strike there are thousands of leaders all competing to be the easiest path for the main discharge... Sounds like your Missus only 'rode' the potential as one or more of them were sampling the house & contents before they collapsed back when the full potential was released elsewhere.
One thing - get shocked by gobsmack energy and it erases electrolytes ; the nerves chords & muscles get disrupted as ion channels in the nerve fibers are depleted by electricity. This is where hospitalization and an overnight ECG/EKG reading is important, there is the possibility heart activity and respiration can 'collapse' many hours after the event...
Wow, been eleven years already? Here is a post on my little tango with lightning: http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,134134.msg879731.html#msg879731
dnix71:
I'm with DanG on this. I made a lot of money one Saturday repairing a cement mixing plant that was struck by lightning while the operator was at his desk. The mixing tower 200 feet away was the high point struck, but something came up from the ground under the mobile home trailer he was working in that controls the tower.
3 APC ups's were wiped out as was the ceramic one-shot protectors on the transfomer supplying the main control board and a couple of relays mounted on the wall behind him. The computers, refrigerator, phones and lights were fine. I would not have wanted to be in that room when the return stroke came up from the ground under my feet.
I hope your wife fully recovers from this.
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