Lightning!

[HOrnbrod]

What a freaking nightmare. Last Tuesday night a herd of thunder/lightning storms ran through. One of the lightning bolts sounded like it hit the house. A little smoke came out of the breaker box and two breakers tripped, but amazingly we didn't lose power or landline telephone. BUT we lost Internet and cable TV. I have ADSL from a local provider, and the lightning fried my Zoom X6 combo modem/wireless router, and the Ethernet port on the motherboard. I turned off the Ethernet port in the BIOS, and purchased an internal Ethernet card, hooked up a spare modem, and am back in business. Except for cable TV - that's still out. I'm lucky more damage didn't occur.

 

So, besides pulling the ADSL cable when storms are in the AO, how can I protect myself from this crap in the future?

[Akula69]

Its difficult to protect against the lightening bolt due to its high energy content. There are several companies that offer surge protectors for various electronics (more like a power strip on steriods) and some even offer a replacement guarentee if the protected item gets fried - but they are really just playing the odds that your home won't get struck.

 

There are external systems that companies install to the exterior of a residence or business which involve isolated metal spikes on the roofline connected to heavy cables that are seperate and insulated from the home's electrical wiring that run directly to an earth ground, but those are usually found on businesses due to high initial cost (although an homeowners insurance policy might give you a premium discount for it).

 

Best bet? a series of inexpensive battery backup/surge protectors on the most important equipment (APC is a good brand) and a good earth ground for the home electrical panel (2 AWG wire and at least a 1/2 - 8 ft copper ground rod... not a 12 awg wire connected to a water pipe comming out of the ground). If the lightening ever strikes again the ground rod would carry away most of the current and what is left will simply fry the surge protector...keeping the current away from the electronics.

[Geonovast]

I agree - most good surge protectors have provisions for a phone line, and the higher end ones even have coaxial jacks. IIRC, I even saw one with ethernet too.

[HOrnbrod]

AAAAARG! Thanks for the reminder guys. I do have an APC Back-UPS 500 installed on my system, but the modem cable was not hooked up through the surge protection jacks. :doh: Must have disconnected it for some reason in the past and forgotten to hook it back up. It is now. :thumbsup:

 

And I do have a good regulation ground wire and rod at the service entrance. We get a lot of lightning and tornadoes this time of year. I hate the bastids.........