lightning strikes

[maplecherry]

we thought one hit close last night. took a walk this morning and found this. hit about 50' from a mainline. 500' of wire vaporized along with a few sections of pipe. also lost a nice tree - still smoldering20150531_093536.jpg20150531_094012.jpg20150531_094032.jpg20150531_094126.jpg

[BreezyHill]

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I has across the field mowing hay when this tree was hit. We found it after the storm passed and were headed to a party. Center of the tree burned thru at the trunk and up to about 18'. Was an ash tree. Fire trucks dumped over 1000 gallons to gut out the tree.

I have fixed many fence chargers from lightening and two neighbors lost barns from lightening strikes.

This is why I ground my support wires that come toward my sugar house. After you seen it one time you don't mess with lightening.

I was a kid an watched 4 people die at the NYS Farm Days when a storm rolled in and people go into and under chuck wagons. Guy sitting on a tire end up 35 feet away. We made it to the building before the first strikes.

Consider yourself luck...it could have been worse, a lot worse. Glad nobody got hurt!

[jimsudz]

Would grounding your mainline wire save a tubing system?Does anyone ground there system?

[BreezyHill]

What happened there no. That is the location of a strike and the amount of voltage supper heated the wire and it melted as did the tubing. I ground mine and end then onto a concrete wall of the sugar house or at a tree away from the sugar house. I have repaired and saw one lightening strike do this to high tensile fence before. The strike was about 100 fett from the house we took refuge in from the fast moving storm. The strike vaporized three strands of 12 ga HT fence for about 100'. We saw the bright flash and then the battens fell to the ground. The remaining wire was damaged for about 15-20' and also needed replacing. I use J hooks/ drive rings into the trees to ground all support wires. The tensioners with a built in insulator will not ground the wire.

[DrTimPerkins]

Reviving this old thread. Got a call around 8:50pm from the fire/security alarm monitoring system. Garbled alarm code. They didn't know what to make of it. Called Wade (PMRC Facilities Coordinator) who lives nearby to check it out. Alarm was screaming so he silenced it and checked out the buildings. Panel was all messed up with an error code. Put it into "disregard" and called the company to repair it in the morning.

This afternoon Jed (tech) walked into the RO room and found this.

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The power supply is for our 15.6" tablet connected to our Smartrek system Totally blown apart and black char mark on the surge strip it was plugged into.

Tablet screen shattered. Hole was blown in the plywood wall where the power supply was plugged in.

Tomorrow they'll do an inventory of all equipment and lights in the sugarhouse. Fortunately the Lapierre HyperBrix that is connected to power right nearby happened to be at the manufacturer for an expansion.

[Sunday Rock Maple]

Wow! A lot of power there, I'm reminded of what my instructor used to drill into us ---"Never become the path of least resistance". Although with lightning strikes as the saying goes "that's above my paygrade."