Lightning sucks.

[Kier]

So I had a lightning strike on or very near to my house today. Following an ear-splitting bang, all the power went off and there was a smell of smoke from the data cupboard under the stairs.

One or both of the ethernet switches had gone bang in a big way, with some of the connected patch cables badly fried.




Pretty much anything that was connected directly to the 24 port switch also died, including the living room TV, every Apple TV 4K box in the house, two stereo amplifiers... I'm actually still building a complete list of all the destroyed equipment. Thankfully my workstation and home servers were connected to the 10GbE switch and survived.

I'm not sure if there will be a video to accompany the upcoming HYS post, there's a lot of work to be done getting the house back to some semblance of working order.

 

[Dad.]

Before cloud services, always had the fear of HDDs (still do somewhat) but every file, every photo being lost had me with maybe 5-6 backup drives that I weekly had to deal with before automation. One night, had lightening hit. Lost a project I was working on a month, spent thousands sending the drive off to get it recovered. They actually did recover like 25%. /tangent

Hope all is well. Hope the business insurance maybe or homeowners kicks in.

 

[Goodfella]

Zeus has spoken. @Chris D start rehearsing. It is a sign the next HYS is on your plate.

Kier - Hope you have your stuff in running order asap.

 

[Unique Username]

Oh dam! I've never actually seen this happen before.

 

[Slavik]

The next HYS video from @Kier is going to be electrifying!

 

[Alpha1]

Over the years I've had 3 lightning strikes in the area that for some reason entered my building from the grid. It did take out my UPS and a couple of servers the first time. I replaced it with a good smart-UPS by ACP. It's advertised to fend off lightning through surge protection and functionality to block off everything behind it. It did hold off 2 strikes so far, so it was worth the investment. I can recommend it.

 

[Kevin]

One or both of the ethernet switches had gone bang in a big way, with some of the connected patch cables badly fried.

Yikes! That's something I have not seen for a long time. Hopefully your insurance covers it. Speaking of insurance, you sure your servers didn't get fried?


On different note, you, uh, weren't doing any weird experiments at the time, were you?

 

[Suzanne O]

Electrical storms are scary.
I'm one that will switch off the computer if one approaches my area.

@Kier

that's one big mess you have to replace.
Glad you and the family are ok though.
I can imagine the pets going bananas though.

 

[Wing]

So I had a lightning strike on or very near to my house today. Following an ear-splitting bang, all the power went off and there was a smell of smoke from the data cupboard under the stairs.

One or both of the ethernet switches had gone bang in a big way, with some of the connected patch cables badly fried.

View attachment 291895 View attachment 291893
View attachment 291894 View attachment 291898

Pretty much anything that was connected directly to the 24 port switch also died, including the living room TV, every Apple TV 4K box in the house, two stereo amplifiers... I'm actually still building a complete list of all the destroyed equipment. Thankfully my workstation and home servers were connected to the 10GbE switch and survived.

I'm not sure if there will be a video to accompany the upcoming HYS post, there's a lot of work to be done getting the house back to some semblance of working order.

Home owners insurance should help you out?

 

[Wildcat Media]

Are you sure there wasn't a DeLorean speeding along at 88 MPH towards the nearest clock tower in your area?

That was a heck of a bang. I'd only seen this happen once, at my grandparents' house. Lightning hit somewhere around the house and all it did was bake the on/off switch on the kitchen television permanently on. Another relative had a lightning hit not too long after, and it blew off the top of their chimney.

Even though I have surge protection in various places in the house, I still power down the important stuff if I see that storms are coming. Especially the audio system. Still, I know I don't have enough, and I might install more protection over the winter. We do have fiber to the house, so at least that is one less copper path.

 

[Kier]

Over the years I've had 3 lightning strikes in the area that for some reason entered my building from the grid. It did take out my UPS and a couple of servers the first time. I replaced it with a good smart-UPS by ACP. It's advertised to fend off lightning through surge protection and functionality to block off everything behind it. It did hold off 2 strikes so far, so it was worth the investment. I can recommend it.

The APC may have been what saved the gear in my office

 

[Suzanne O]

If that happens here and we do get loud bangs sometimes, I think i'd get into trouble with the words that i'd be using on here.
I know for one thing my cat would have hidden under my bed.

 

[Mendalla]

So my lightning story:

Back in my days managing systems in a library (I am actually a librarian by training), we had a big clunky old style minicomputer to run the automated library system for the catalogue, checkout, managing our ordering, and such. Picture a washer and dryer with one unit having the processors and memory and the other two disk drives the size of a suitcase and a tape drive that took at least three reasonably healthy, fit people to move. We used old school dumb terminals connected to it with serial cables.

One day during a storm, a strike caused a surge that fried a terminal in public services, the barcode reader attached to it (since the reader sat between the terminal and the cable to the computer), and went back through the cable and cooked a port card in the mini. Ouch. The mini actually had a power conditioner bigger than a modern server attached but since the surge went through the serial line, it did no good.

 

[Paul B]

We get fairly intense storms here in NC.

Not as bad as the midwest but still decent.

Had 2 strikes next to the house the other week.
The closest one was about 50 metres away - I saw that one hit ground.

A few months ago I was out running on the trail in the woods when a storm system developed quickly.
I was several km away from home so just kept running and hoping for the best.
The closest strike was about a km away.

A few months ago, a house 2 streets over got hit.
The family thought nothing of it until a few minutes later they smelled smoke.
It had started a fire in the attic.
The fire was extinguished but the damage to the wiring and frame meant the house had to be torn down and rebuilt.

 

[eva2000]

The APC may have been what saved the gear in my office

Yeah definitely need UPS and business grade surge protection. Lightning has taken out my gear in the past - including cable modems, refrigerator and some UPS devices. Had electrician install surge device in main switch and haven't had the issue since.

Also using Thor technology surge protectors https://www.thortechnologies.com.au/product-category/surge/

A12BF – 8 Way Surge Protector with Elite Filtration END OF LIFE – Thor Technologies

THE ULTIMATE PROTECTION SmartBoard Smart Series with unique Dynamic Active Tracking™ is the most comprehensive and advanced solution to protect your electronic equipment. The Thor SmartBrain not only protects from surges, it also filters and cleans electrical frequency noise to...

www.thortechnologies.com.au

3 isolated banks and 7222 joules protection

 

[digitalpoint]

So I had a lightning strike on or very near to my house today. Following an ear-splitting bang, all the power went off and there was a smell of smoke from the data cupboard under the stairs.

One or both of the ethernet switches had gone bang in a big way, with some of the connected patch cables badly fried.

View attachment 291895 View attachment 291893
View attachment 291894 View attachment 291898

Pretty much anything that was connected directly to the 24 port switch also died, including the living room TV, every Apple TV 4K box in the house, two stereo amplifiers... I'm actually still building a complete list of all the destroyed equipment. Thankfully my workstation and home servers were connected to the 10GbE switch and survived.

I'm not sure if there will be a video to accompany the upcoming HYS post, there's a lot of work to be done getting the house back to some semblance of working order.

Crazy... coincidentally, I installed one of these whole house systems in my house last month. Have never have the pleasure of dealing with a lightning strike like you, but we do get some lightning storms roll through during monsoon season so I figured why not...

https://www.se.com/us/en/product/HEPD80/surge-protection-device-hepd-80ka-120-240v-1-phase-3-wire-spd-type-1/

I think the UK homes run single phase 230V, so not sure if that exact one would work or not. It's basically a sacrificial device that includes $75,000 insurance for anything that gets destroyed downstream.

 

[eva2000]

coincidentally, I installed one of these whole house systems in my house last month.

Definitely worth the investment

 

[FTL]

That looks nasty. Glad no one was injured and hope it's all covered by insurance.

 

[wedgar]

So I had a lightning strike on or very near to my house today. Following an ear-splitting bang, all the power went off and there was a smell of smoke from the data cupboard under the stairs.

One or both of the ethernet switches had gone bang in a big way, with some of the connected patch cables badly fried.

View attachment 291895 View attachment 291893
View attachment 291894 View attachment 291898

Pretty much anything that was connected directly to the 24 port switch also died, including the living room TV, every Apple TV 4K box in the house, two stereo amplifiers... I'm actually still building a complete list of all the destroyed equipment. Thankfully my workstation and home servers were connected to the 10GbE switch and survived.

I'm not sure if there will be a video to accompany the upcoming HYS post, there's a lot of work to be done getting the house back to some semblance of working order.

Sorry to hear this. Several years ago I had a lightning strike on my amateur radio 2 meter/70 centimeter antenna which killed 2 radios, 3 computers and several power supplies. I had to file suit against my insurance company to get a reasonable payout. Best wishes!

 

[Claudio]

3 isolated banks and 7222 joules protection

The small print says "equivalent to 2440 Joules using UL1449 standard". I was going to purchase the same once I noticed it so I went on a UPS