Allodoxaphobia wrote:

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:33:06 GMT, NSM wrote:

"jakdedert" wrote in message
...

It's that time of year again. Yeah, I know, I know...I need whole house
surge protection....

It's available and easy to install.

And, then the lightning strike comes in on the phone line or the cable
tv coax or the extension cord laid out to the garden fountain pump....

When it's a direct strike, your number is up.

In the past few years, a tree thirty feet from my service entrance and a
tree fifty feet from my service entrance got struck. The second one lit
up the neighborhood. I had no electrical damage either time.

Six days ago my chimney got hit. The bolt blew masonry and shingles
sixty feet. I was online. My screen froze with a strange tint, but
things were fine on restart.

I lost two stereo receivers and the control board for my furnace/ac. My
battery-powered indoor/outdoor thermometer was "stunned". It recovered
when I switched from F to C and back.

My other electronics, including a shortwave plugged in with one stereo
receiver and a TV plugged in with the other, showed no damage. One
stereo receiver was on, and I suppose the surge took the amp. The other
was off, and the digital controls got wrecked.

My modem and cordless phone were fine. Across the street, the surge
from my strike took out the neighbors' modem, satellite receiver (with a
telco connection) and two phones. They went online six years ago and
have repeatedly asked why they kept losing modems and surge protectors.
I have repeatedly told them that until they bond their telco electrode
to their power electrode (NEC 250.54) they will be vulnerable to ground
surges. They have repeatedly ignored my advice and will continue to
ignore it.

I might not have lost my ac control board if I'd paid more attention to
the above article. The furnace and the compressor are on concrete
slabs, and I've never checked to see if their frames show zero ohms to
my primary grounding electrode.

Except the cellphone charger, everything the OP lost may have been
connected to a TV cable or telephone cable. I wonder if his bonding is
okay. I think I've read that sometimes cable TV has no local ground,
and before you ground your end, you must isolate it from the company
cable with a couple of baluns.