Electrical Question

Check out the www.brickwall.com website. These guys are very helpful.

A 75 foot blue spruce tree 50 feet from my house was struck The tree exploded!

Electricity came under the ground, throwing 100 pound stones of a wall 50 feet, and broke the corner of the house foundation. Every fuse in the house was blown, but not a single breaker opened. TVs, VCRs, Microwave, computer surge protector, TV cable distribution amp, computer modem card and refrigerator control panel were blown. There was no damage to the fuse-protected audio gear, but my FM tuner station memory was scambled, and had to be reprogrammed!

Insurance bought new of everything.

Switches have NO effect on lightning surges. At one time (before the power company updated their equipment) all our lights would flicker, and sometimes the bulbs would blow during lightning storms.

Forget about surge protectors if lightening strikes between the pole line transformer and the wiring to your house! David Blair (Custom Power Cord) told me of a revealing experience. He had a piece of gear plugged into the power outlet, but the internal fuses were removed. The next morning, after a violent electrical storm, he found that lightening had hit something nearby. The piece of gear WAS FRIED; the lightening surge had jumped the gap between the two sides of the EMPTY fuse holders. If there is lightening activity in your area, UNPLUG YOUR EQUIPMENT. I will unplug my gear when the strikes approach one mile away (5 second delay between the flash and thunder).

Lightning can come in through the hot, neutral or ground lines of your AC. As such, pulling the breaker open will not negate your potential for lightning damage. Unplugging from the walls will. This is not to say that you would be covered 100% though, as you could still suffer problems from the EM field of a very near lightning strike.

As a side note, electricity will flow to wherever it can. Just because you pull a fuse on the hot side of the circuit ( opening the circuit ) doesn't mean that the voltage surge won't flow in through the ground or neutral and try to complete the circuit. In many cases, it is not the high voltage passing through the component that does the damage, it is the sudden collapse of the field as the voltage is removed from the circuit. Sean
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PS... If there is enough voltage / current to arc from a few miles in the sky down to Earth level, what is a few more feet, inches or millimeters across a fuse, breaker or disconnected wire ???