Direct lightning hit destroyed many electronics

[rvrichardson]

So this past Friday on a partly cloudy day with no pre-warning, my house took a direct lightning hit. At first did not see anything specific except I lost my UVERSE internet connection. Going outside to check where the lightning hit, I noticed that the outside telecoms box had its access door blown off. Then started noticing other electronics failing. So the total count is now 3 HDTV's, 1 Onkyo AVR, 1 Playstation, all the telephones and the house alarm system, in fact anything that was directly or indirectly connected to a UVERSE terminal, including each UVERSE terminal was destroyed. All my UVERSE terminals are backboned on the house coax cable network. All the electronics are connected to AC Surge Strips.

The UVERSE installer told me at the time of installation that I should not run the coax through the coax cable surge protectors on each power strip as this would affect the UVERSE signal, in fact I would have to rely on the outside surge protector as the only protection.

So my question is, apart from switching to the UVERSE WiFi terminal (2 MAX per household), are there any surge protectors out there that can be added to the Coax connectors to help offset this damage again.

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

Just about nothing can protect you from a direct lightning strike, nothing can dissipate millions of voltage in a few milliseconds.

Chris

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Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[jbdet313]

You can get whole-house protectors that attach to the electric panel itself, run anywhere $300 and up, plus electrician installation. As to the Telco box, sounds like it wasn't attached to a grounding stake outside.

A workaround to separately ground your coax distribution is to ground the initial splitter to either a copper pipe of your water system, or to a nearby grounded electric outlet box's ground.

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

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jbdet313 wrote:

You can get whole-house protectors that attach to the electric panel itself, run anywhere $300 and up, plus electrician installation. As to the Telco box, sounds like it wasn't attached to a grounding stake outside.

A workaround to separately ground your coax distribution is to ground the initial splitter to either a copper pipe of your water system, or to a nearby grounded electric outlet box's ground.

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Whole house protectors will not prevent direct strike damage, again they can not dissipate millions of voltage in a few milliseconds.  Possibly they would protect at a near strike and would be useless if it came in on telco/Uverse lines.

The correct place for grounding is in the Nid and not anypoint after that or a ground loop may be setup.  It's definately a no-no to ground any of the splitters/diplexer in a coax install just for that reason.

Chris

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Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[rvrichardson]

So I guess the only solution is good homeowners insurance

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

Yes that, but how many direct strikes do you think you'll get?  Only thing I've had, is a couple summers ago, I got an immediate flash/BANG at the same time, it was real close.  Nothing happened, Uverse/power stayed up w/o a flicker.

Chris

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Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-800-288-2020, After he gets acct info, press # a bunch of times, get a menu from Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[rvrichardson]

Well I have to praise the Uverse team that did my repair. Between the first indoor engineer that replaced the outside telecoms box, who then handed the ticket to the outdoor engineer who tirelessly worked into Friday night to give me a temporary circuit and then repaired the underground cable the whole of Saturday morning into the afternoon and then finally the third indoor engineer who repaired the indoor cabling, burned out connectors and Uverse terminals and ensured that the alarm dialup was functioning correctly. Considering the amount of damage, I think 30 hours was from start to finish on a weekend, an incredible effort..

Kudos AT&T, wonderful job.

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Good deal!  Thanks for the update.

[pcivoice]

Although it is known that you can not protect anything from direct hit from lighting because of hte amount of voltage that it carries.  There are some problems with the AT&T uverse box and I believe that htey are not groudned properly.  Because when lightning hits it is commonly known that you have no idea where andwhich direction it will go. It hits kind of epxlodes in all directions and goes into many places and travesl thorugh the house. In this persons case and as in mine, it hit only the ATT uverse box connected outside and it stayed only on what was connected to the UVERSE.  it blew out the surge protectors telephone jack  if they had the telephone lines connected to them but it did not blow out the sure protector power sources or anything connected to the power  to the house.  Which leads me to believe that the AT&T boxes are not properly grounded.  I spoke with several experts about lightning recently and well it is hard to determine where lightning will hit and what damage it will cause but for it to stay in one loop like that and one only makes things suspicious.  The problem is that AT&T is a big company who can cover these things up and who tells people that it was lightning how can they be responsible for an act of nature or god like that.  Most would agree.  however, as an engineer in this industry I feel that they have made some short cuts or are aware of a problem and are not fixing it.  When I asked if there are any resources to install to protect our equipmwent from this type of damage on their lines, the reply was" This technolgy has not come yet".  Which menas they are researching it.  so here is the scary thing,  when they install your equipment they install a battery back up box in your house, that box supplies power to their box on the outside, which provides the bundled services to your equipment on the inside, which means that if the outside box is not grounded properly and lightning strikes it, it travels inside automatically because that is where it's power source is, becasue that is where it's power source is. I  think this could be a fire hazard depending on where you place that box it oculd be dangerous or fatal. 

[ScottMac]

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pcivoice wrote:

Although it is known that you can not protect anything from direct hit from lighting because of hte amount of voltage that it carries.  There are some problems with the AT&T uverse box and I believe that htey are not groudned properly.  Because when lightning hits it is commonly known that you have no idea where andwhich direction it will go. It hits kind of epxlodes in all directions and goes into many places and travesl thorugh the house. In this persons case and as in mine, it hit only the ATT uverse box connected outside and it stayed only on what was connected to the UVERSE.  it blew out the surge protectors telephone jack  if they had the telephone lines connected to them but it did not blow out the sure protector power sources or anything connected to the power  to the house.  Which leads me to believe that the AT&T boxes are not properly grounded.  I spoke with several experts about lightning recently and well it is hard to determine where lightning will hit and what damage it will cause but for it to stay in one loop like that and one only makes things suspicious.  The problem is that AT&T is a big company who can cover these things up and who tells people that it was lightning how can they be responsible for an act of nature or god like that.  Most would agree.  however, as an engineer in this industry I feel that they have made some short cuts or are aware of a problem and are not fixing it.  When I asked if there are any resources to install to protect our equipmwent from this type of damage on their lines, the reply was" This technolgy has not come yet".  Which menas they are researching it.  so here is the scary thing,  when they install your equipment they install a battery back up box in your house, that box supplies power to their box on the outside, which provides the bundled services to your equipment on the inside, which means that if the outside box is not grounded properly and lightning strikes it, it travels inside automatically because that is where it's power source is, becasue that is where it's power source is. I  think this could be a fire hazard depending on where you place that box it oculd be dangerous or fatal. 

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The box on the outside (the NID) is grounded to the same grounding point as your power, or if it is located too far away from the power, another rod is installed just for the NID.

In addition to the protection system in the NID, a stand-alone RG also has secondary protectors on the UTP side and another system on the coax side.

If you have inbound coax from a previous cable install, lightning can come in that way. Do you have a TV antenna with a run to the TV or AV receiver? the surge can pass into and through the TV and groun through the U-verse system and / or power line.

There are a lot of scenarios that include and exclude U-verse, power, cableTV media, TV antennas, Cyclone fences, exterior cable runs of various types ... without investigation, there's no telling what the cause/path may be.

[BeeBeeSA ACE - Wizard]

Lightning hit a tree at my brothers house a few years back.  It was at night.  This tree was approx 20 to 25 ft. from his house in the back yard.  He told me he saw the lightning bolt come thru his bedroom window, it went all the way around the top of the room and back to the window and then disappeared.  In the morning we saw the tree had exploded from the hit and we could see where the lightning followed an underground root which ran all the way to the side of his house.  We figure that's how it got to the bedroom.  We could tell because the grass was actually burned along the path of the root and in some areas along the path the dirt had actually been blown away and the root was exposed a foot deep.

Needless to say the tree was destroyed as was most of his electronic gear.