Add getting your house struck by lightning to the list of things I do not recommend.

Not an expert on HV damage but remember some old work related stuff.  Surge protectors usually  don't, the power is so intense it just blows thru.  The only true fix is unplug everything before a storm.  I am surprised by the car ecu, it was not connected or grounded.  If the strike was that close I would think some visible damage from the arc would exist.  

We are not in storm country but at the top of a hill.  Saw a chimney get blown right off a house and another neighbor had a direct hit.  Everything plugged in was killed and some of the outlets had charred receptacles.  Scary.

golfduke said:

Yeah I'd try and fire it up with an ECU off of some sketchy website before going down the insurance road myself...  As much of an annoyance as it is, tvs are cheap enough, I'd hate to risk a rate jack or even a nonrenewal for a few tvs, an xbox, and possibly an easy-ish car fix.

 

But that really does suck, regardless. 

 

Yeah, whatever you do don't use your insurance for what you're paying for. You run the risk of the crooks canceling you because you asked them to uphold their end of the agreement you've been paying for for years. 
Insurance is a scam.

A number of years ago, I was standing in the driveway maybe 20 minutes after a thunderstorm had passed. Sky was clear blue, no thunder audible in the distance, so I went back to whatever I had been working on before it rained. At that point, lightning struck and the top of a tall locust tree exploded, showering me, the driveway, and a good portion of the yard with bits of tree. I was maybe 20ft from it; two big propane tanks were a lot closer than that, but thankfully stayed unexploded. I watched any loose debris on the ground jump and settle as the shockwave passed, and felt it in my chest. At that point I decided my project could wait.

Lost a computer, a garage door opener, and a couple small appliances in the house. Could have been worse in several ways.

Good luck getting it sorted.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

Mndsm said:

She replied "Iono- this one was just struck by lightning, I'm not sure how I feel about electric cars right now". 

Yeah, I hate to think what would happen if lightning struck the house while an EV was plugged in.  Bricking the car is probably the best possible outcome there.

We had an early Volt come into our dealership that wouldn't come out of park. Our EV tech poked around it for a while trying to figure it out and then noticed that in the module data it wouldn't let the car shift out of park because it seemed to think it was still plugged into a charge cable (safety procedure so that you can't drive off with it plugged in). He popped the door and the charge port was all charred and melted. Got talking to the customer and they had had it plugged in and their hose had been struck by lightning, and it had gone through the charger and cooked the charger and the charge port. Put a new charge port in it and, voila, it would come out of park.

Today's update - the service writer is officially an idiot. He thinks the world's dumbest car has a TCM. no it doesn't. It's got a clutch and a master cylinder. So- I'm further gambling on the ECU being the problem here. I talked to one of the other guys who is NOT a service writer and he seems to agree with me. It couldn't really be much else. I bought the stupidest car on earth on purpose. HOWEVER-

what's fmv on a free "bad" turbo off a diesel Nissan Titan? No shaft play, apparently the wastegate is unhappy. It's heavy as all creation, and pretty good sized, but it was free. 

porschenut said:

Not an expert on HV damage but remember some old work related stuff.  Surge protectors usually  don't, the power is so intense it just blows thru.  The only true fix is unplug everything before a storm.  I am surprised by the car ecu, it was not connected or grounded.  If the strike was that close I would think some visible damage from the arc would exist.  

We are not in storm country but at the top of a hill.  Saw a chimney get blown right off a house and another neighbor had a direct hit.  Everything plugged in was killed and some of the outlets had charred receptacles.  Scary.

Surge protectors work for ordinary power surges from manmade causes, but lightning blows through everything, including large airgaps and what we might traditionally think of as non-conductive materials. The only things that have any hope of stopping a lightning strike are heavy-duty building-level equipment like a lightning rod or a spark gap protector.

I'm not surprised by the car's ECU being fried because it's the most electrically sensitive part of a car and it takes very little to destroy a chip, just the EMF from a nearby strike or the tiniest fraction of the lightning strike's power going through the car would be enough to do it - remember, at those voltages the material doesn't really matter, touching the ground with rubber tires is plenty grounded enough.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

That would make sense. What really throws me about it is absolutely no other indications gave the car away as having a cooked ECU. the radio presets were fine, all the other stuff worked... I mean it is the dumbest car on earth so there really isn't anything that CAN go wrong with it- but the fact that it took the ECU and my chineseium aux port still works blows my mind. Whatever. It's Progressive's problem right now. 

GameboyRMH said:

Surge protectors work for ordinary power surges from manmade causes, but lightning blows through everything, including large airgaps and what we might traditionally think of as non-conductive materials.

It is possible to truly protect against lightning, but it's not easy or cheap.  When I was at college they had a Burroughs mainframe taking up 2/3 of the machine room (the rest of it was the newer equipment like Sun servers and VAXen).  That Burroughs had been VERY expensive when they bought it, so it was protected with some very heavy duty electrical gear, including a motor-generator set.  Electric motor spins a big heavy flywheel.  Flywheel is hooked to a shaft, shaft spins another flywheel with a generator on it.

UPDATE- So while the car people are continuing to move at the speed of smell and I'm just waiting to have a visit from the nice dogs in seminole country, our renters insurance is actually coming out today to assess the two TVs and the Xbox. I find this *slightly* asinine as I've already paid to have that assessment done by a "professional", but apparently we have to have another professional come out and determine that YES in fact- the damn things are fried and NO, I am not tried to berkeley anyone. I just want some new TVs. 

In other news, if we DO end up needing to purchase a new/used vehicle, math strangely enough has a Lexus as an actual reasonable option. Let's get weird. 

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

It is possible to truly protect against lightning, but it's not easy or cheap.  When I was at college they had a Burroughs mainframe taking up 2/3 of the machine room (the rest of it was the newer equipment like Sun servers and VAXen).  That Burroughs had been VERY expensive when they bought it, so it was protected with some very heavy duty electrical gear, including a motor-generator set.  Electric motor spins a big heavy flywheel.  Flywheel is hooked to a shaft, shaft spins another flywheel with a generator on it.

Probably not done for lightning protection but a mechanical form of Uninterruptible Power Supply.
The Primary Radar at our airport, installed in 1958, had something similar with a 150hp electric motor spinning an eight ton flywheel and generator. The other end of the generator was attached, via a clutch, to a six cylinder diesel. When the main supply failed the flywheel was good for twenty or so seconds during which time the diesel cranked into life and took over supply.
Before my time but apparently during engine maintenance one of the head gaskets wasn't installed properly allowing water into one cylinder - mains failed, starter motor wouldn't turn it over, clutch engaged for a crash start, one head buried itself in the roof ...

RichardNZ said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

It is possible to truly protect against lightning, but it's not easy or cheap.  When I was at college they had a Burroughs mainframe taking up 2/3 of the machine room (the rest of it was the newer equipment like Sun servers and VAXen).  That Burroughs had been VERY expensive when they bought it, so it was protected with some very heavy duty electrical gear, including a motor-generator set.  Electric motor spins a big heavy flywheel.  Flywheel is hooked to a shaft, shaft spins another flywheel with a generator on it.

Probably not done for lightning protection but a mechanical form of Uninterruptible Power Supply.
The Primary Radar at our airport, installed in 1958, had something similar with a 150hp electric motor spinning an eight ton flywheel and generator. The other end of the generator was attached, via a clutch, to a six cylinder diesel. When the main supply failed the flywheel was good for twenty or so seconds during which time the diesel cranked into life and took over supply.
Before my time but apparently during engine maintenance one of the head gaskets wasn't installed properly allowing water into one cylinder - mains failed, starter motor wouldn't turn it over, clutch engaged for a crash start, one head buried itself in the roof ...

This was actually very specifically for power regulation/conditioning (not confined to lightning, but any sort of irregularity).  It was sort of the opposite of a UPS, any time the power went out of spec for more than like 50 milliseconds it would shut down and require someone to go down to the basement to manually restart it. :)

Anyone still listening? No? 

Gonna talk to myself anyhow. 

Insurance evaluator came out yesterday. Confirmed that our E36 M3 was broke. Yep. Coulda told you that. Got a notification today that they're cutting a check. That's good. The check is not the right number. That's bad. So the game begins. POSSIBLE incorrect information about our deductible aside, I need to know what and how they're calculating valuation on our televisions and if they're going total replacement or if they're going repair. My math isn't matching their math in any way shape or form- because even on sale, LAST years version of the TV's that were cooked were approximately $200 more EACH than they're estimating, or at least they are by my count. Now if we're going by this year, and off-sale full retail, that number goes up to about a grand. The Xbox.... I'm assuming they can count to $500. So unless they're doing used car math or something (which isn't what i've ever heard of when it comes to electronic insurance, it's usually same for same) they've done the math wrong. Should be interesting to read the report. Question is what do we do about it. Either i'm gonna fight with insurance over some chinese TV's or i'm gonna take a dick kicking. 

Also on the surprise list was car insurance. They've actually given me a very surprising number, and the Nissan will most likely be fixed. I am FINE with this. it's got a new clutch. I don't really want a car note. We're paying them an insane number anyways because you can't have anything good in Florida, so berkeley em, let's get some $$$ back. Between the trans however many years ago, the clutch, and now the ECU, this car should be good.....for forever. 

All in all, this might actually turn out ok. Little sad I'm not gonna buy a Lexus, not sad I'm not gonna have a car note. 

Is it replacement value? If so, what is the cost to replace a tv that is used as much as yours was? Probably slightly less than retail. 

That part I do not know. I'm waiting to see the estimate and breakdown before I decide on a final course of action. WORST CASE SCENARIO- I get two new three year newer 10" larger TV's for $600 oop. I'm not super mad at that. 

Seems there are some mitigations to consider:   Protecting Your Home From Lightning (familyhandyman.com)

We had a strike in the yard a few years ago, hit a metal t-post supporting a small tree. Which happened to be on top of the buried copper phone line. Anyone remember those? Anyway, it traveled into the house and took out the phone system and a few surge protectors. Replaced everything, even added a few new runs to the phone wiring that has not been used since then. 

The best part? The t-post was close to the 500 gal propane tank less than 30ft from the house, and we didn't blow up! Yay! And the tree has grown exceptionally well since then.

Lightning rods are common around here. Basically small metal spiky posts strung across the roof, connected to a HD cable, and run to ground in the yard. At least 3 houses have burned to the ground in the area from lightning strikes.

Best of luck getting proper value for the damages, we're all pulling for ya! We had to argue a lot about electronics when we were burglarized.

mtn said:

Is it replacement value? If so, what is the cost to replace a tv that is used as much as yours was? Probably slightly less than retail. 

This. You need to know if your policy is ACV (Actual Cash Value), which they pay you for the depreciated/used value of the item. With RCV (Replacement Cost Value), they pay for the used value up front, then cut you another check once you've replaced it. 

When I worked at State Farm, if you had an RCV policy, you could also choose to just have us use one of our suppliers to to just send you a new TV. Or if yours was no longer made send you the equivalent. 

This is why I tell people it's important to read your policy. 

We had a weird one a few years ago. Lightning didn't directly hit our house, but was very close. Everything in the living room was hooked up to a fairly expensive surge protector/battery backup. 

PS4 and Roku died. TV and A/V Reciever were fine. 

In reply to z31maniac :

And I didn't pick the policy so I have no idea if it's an ACV or RCV. Guess we're digging out paperwork, because that'll tell me immediately. This was all a swmbo deal. 

In reply to z31maniac :

I learned something about that. APPARENTLY there's certain types that allow suppression, and certain types that are full on cutoff. I've got my stuff on APC surge protectors. Obviously both TV's did not survive. But according to the inspector that verified the death of said TVs, they're not designed to do full voltage cutoff (at least the APC ones) they're designed to do voltage suppression, to 330v. If it goes OVER 330v, the machine can still take the hit, and go down. It's up to the machine at that point. There's another model out there...panaflex? something along those lines, that's designed to outright cut off at something like less than 90v or more than 140v, like full circuit interruption. They're not cheap (The bars similar to the ones I'm running are $100 or so a piece, and the mack daddy ones are 300+) but given my current situation, that may be the right answer. 

In reply to Mndsm :

I had Panaflex at my old house. But the current APC battery backup/surge protectors are about 4 years old. And I've read that's typically the life span for a surge protector. Although this wasn't what was in the living room when the PS4 and Roku got zapped. 

Keep in mind that a bolt of lightning is a 300 million volt electrical arc that has just turned a couple miles of (very non-conductive) air into plasma in order to end up in your house.  Most surge suppressors use a $0.50 metal oxide varistor (MOV) to provide protection, they have a breakdown voltage that's about a million times lower than the electrical potential of the lightning bolt.

Lightning is going to do what it's going to do, and there isn't much we can do about it.

You're probably going to find more damage to the car down the road. 

Any bearing the surge passes through will have a burnt spot in it. It won't show up right away.

I lost a friend when I was young to a lightning strike.  She was plugging in a kitchen mixer to bake with her mom when it struck.  Her hand was on the stainless sink when it hit and the surplus electrons chose to go through her to ground.  Super freak coincidence.

I'm so sorry you have this damage to deal with, but I'm grateful you're here posting instead of crispy and corpsey

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Gonna take a little more than some spicy static to take me down, my friend.