On Jun 4, 9:43*am, "Ed Pawlowski" wrote:
We had a near lightening strike that sent a surge though the power lines.
Not sure where the hit was, but I did have some damage.

My wife called me at work after a thunderstorm and said she saw a big red
ball in the driveway and then some of the lights went out. *The doorbell
rang and would not stop ringing. *I told her to take a wire off the chimes
and they stopped, but a breaker was tripped and would not reset. *The bell
button has a diode in it and that may have taken the hit.

When I got home, I took the two wires off of the breaker and it still did
not reset so I replaced the breaker. *One of the circuits was OK, the other
had a short and tripped the breaker. *Since it was not getting dark and it
was still raining, the hunt would wait a day. *Next day, I went out to the
(detached) garage and found an X-10 module I use to control an outdoor light
was blown apart and burnt. *The plastic cover was gone, the insides were
soot covered. * I'm wondering if the jolt came in that way or out, it was
the furthest away from the electric panel.

I'm going to replace the receptacle it was plugged into also. *I've not
pulled that out yet, but I'm not taking any chances. *Once replaced. I'll
hook the wire back to the breaker.

Losses we *HD TV, Surround sound receiver, X-10 module, computer router,
doorbell.

The good news is: *I now have a 47" TV with far better picture than my 5
year old 32" and a better sound system.
More stuff is on surge protectors too.

It is a good time to take a test inventory of everything in the house
that is electrical or might have a processor. We experienced a
strike near the house last September and knew we had damage
immediately. Computer was dead. Garage door openers were dead, Older
TV dead. Our insurance agent told us to take our time doing a damage
assessment because there is likely to be more. She was right. Over
a period of two weeks we found out all of the local wireless providers
network (antenna, modem, etc) was damaged - just took a few days to
die. We found 6 GFIs that were damaged, all surge protectors in the
house were dead. In addition to garage door opener circuit boards,
one of the light sensors croaked within a week, etc, etc, etc. What
looked like a $1,200 claim a couple of days after the strike ended up
being more than $2,000.

We were up at 2:00am when it hit. It struck somewhere just north of
the house but I never found the attach point. All north windows went
pure white, as did the interior of the house and the noise sounded
like an M-80 in a trash can, inside of the house! Noise and flash
exactly concurrent. Scary by itself but we saw sparks flying out of a
kitchen GFI and that lasted 2-3 seconds.

RonB