Struck by Lightning

chris

chris

cltdba
Moderator
Joined
Sep 28, 2009
Location
Concord, NC
My home was struck by lightning yesterday evening. Scared the bejeezus out of the wife and I. Extremely loud and bright. The way it sounded you would have thought it blew a hole through the house.

After it happened we searched the house for fires and such but found none. One room in particular had that electrical smell. Almost smelled like gun powder actually. Didn't find any fires, holes or anything out of the ordinary in that room so I don't know what caused it. There is an entry door in that room so perhaps the smell was from outside?

After further inspection, the playstation 3 was not working. It would turn on, but wouldn't send a signal via HDMI. Then we found an iPod that was plugged in that got fried. It actually left a black mark on the filing cabinet where it was sitting. I tried the PS3 again tonight and it came on just fine. Everything else in the house seems to be working fine. No visible physical damage that I can see.

My insurance deductible is $500. I called an electrician to come out and check things, but I'm kinda wondering if I should cancel that call now. It's going to cost $300 to inspect the home and I'm thinking he won't find enough damage to make it worth my while to file a claim. I'd love to use this event as a way to fix the various wiring problems I have, but I'm pretty sure the insurance company is going to do their own inspection and they'd deem those problems not caused by the storm.

Anyone else had a house struck and file an insurance claim? What should I expect?
 
Glad to hear it wasn't worse.
last night a tree in my neighbors yard took a direct hit ...scared the hell out of me and the wife...and covered my neighbor's side yard with Poplar splinters ranging from 1 foot to 7 feet long...literally exploded the tree into 100 pieces.
 
Hell I wish it would've burnt the house to the ground! Could've rebuilt it much nicer! heheh

On the other hand, I'm extremely happy (and lucky!) no one was hurt.
 
Lightning struck about 10' from the back deck of my last house. It ran down a tree to the dog run and then to the ground. Thankfully we had brought the dog in before the storm. It destroyed everything in my A/V room and killed the tree. My insurance co told me to have a certified repair person inspect everything and submit that with an estimate, from a store, for replacement cost. Had an electrician look at the house too. Insurance paid for all the diagnostics and replacement cost even for the tree. Never even saw an adjustor, just did everything over the phone but I'm sure every insurance co is different. We had about 10K total in damages fwiw.
 
All I appear to be out right now is an iPod touch and now a microwave. Just found a few buttons on the display to not be working properly. Can't enter a cook time for example. I guess I should just pay the $300 for the guy to come out and give me some peace of mind. Maybe he has more experience with this. The inspection, iPod touch and the microwave will cover the $500 deductible.

I hear that things can continue to get worse after a strike. Meaning some appliances work fine now, but later stop working. Anyone hear of that?
 
It wasn't a direct hit, but a few years ago lightning struck very close to the house and came in on a power line, actually jumped off the outdoor wires and burnt a hole in the siding. We had just sit down to eat when it happened, and I saw the fire fly across the kitchen windows. We lost a water heater, all phones, stereo receiver, computer components, and several other things. The insurance covered all of it. I repaired the siding myself and they paid me for doing that. I can't say that I lost anything else later as a result.
 
I'm a licensed electrician. My cousin had her house in Lincolnton last week. I went down and took a look and it took out an oven, Rennai gas water heater, microwave, dishwasher, and through a surge protector it killed a fax machine and new high end computer.

The best insurance for lightning strikes---ground rods and lightning arrestors.

Lightning will usually take out things that have circuit boards.





EDIT: I've seen where lightning hit a tree next to a house-it went through the wiring and literally busted sheetrock in the basement. Pretty impressive at the amount of damage it can do.
 
My A/C compressor got struck by lightining in the summer of 2006. I was sitting in my garage watching the storm, when BAM! I knew the strike was close, but didn't know it was that close. Went to bed, and then went to work the next day. It was over 80 degrees in the house when I got home from work that next day. That was my clue. Nothing else was damaged. I have $500 deductible as well, so that is what it cost me to have the compressor replaced.
 
First off, check every appliance in the house. Turn the oven up to 350F and make sure it maintains temp. Turn the heat on. Check anything and everything that was plugged in and take note of what receptacles had damaged equipment. And follow your nose -- anything that smells fried... probably is fried.

Honestly.... for the 'peace of mind' aspect... just hire the electrician. If you're comfortable pulling the cover on the breaker panel, removing and inspecting a couple receptacles, checking for damage at the ground rods, etc... then go right ahead. But you're probably better off hiring somebody to do it for you.
 
I'm comfortable doing all the work, but just don't have the time to do it. I'm gonna let him come on out and take a look. He's also going to check on some other things for me. (Like running 220 to my garage.)

We started seeing some power surges this morning. When the wife turned off the hair dryer the lights got bright, then dim and returned to normal. She said it was happening in other areas too. I have some lamps with CFLs in the living room that flicker even when off. Definitely some lightning shock voodoo going on. :)
 
Two years ago lightning took out a cable company junction at the corner of our street. We didn't know it at the time. not home and it was fixed by the time we were.
Shortly thereafter we started having power surges ..... turn something on in one room, lights would dim in another.
When the washing machine was agitating, all the lights in the house would blink .... sometimes even go out in the basement.
When the digital TV changeover hit, we decided to get cable to the other rooms and when the cable guy cam he said we had a bad signal. He traced it back to the filters on the pole ALL were fried, a while later we even had to have cable in the house replaced ..... thats when we heard about the lightning damage. It was reported by the first guy , but not told to us.
Funny thing is ..... fixing the cable issue fixed everything else.


Matt
 
Definitely get a very thorough inspection. It's entirely possible that stuff could be fried in the box, or wires melted together inside walls where they cross, or all kinds of weirdness. Damage "after the fact" may happen because of shorts introduced by melted wires.

My grandparents house was almost burned up from a lightning strike - fire in the walls, what would today probably have been 20-30K or more of damage; always after that, they unplugged anything they weren't using, as soon as they finished using it, and kept grounds on all the antennas, etc. To this day I tend to do the same, which I'm pretty sure has saved my computers and TVs more than once.

Lightning is scary stuff. Glad you are OK.
 
do have it checked last year lightning hit a fence pole in my yard ran over to a metal gutter right next to where my son son and wife were sitting in the screen porch. It smoked several wires under the house and my well pump on the other end of the circuit 150 yards from my house. Also k.o'ed kids tv all the cordless phones and my router throught a surge protector.
 
Here's to hoping he finds tons of damage in my home where all the walls and flooring need to be ripped out and redone! :beer: Wait maybe I should preface that with Assuming the insurance will pay... heheh
 
Not sure who you have for insurance but I have All-State. Last year while vacationing at the beach my house was hit by lightning the day before we got home.I contacted All State as soon as I starting figuring out what had happened. Up front they were very easy to work with and sent an engineer out that tested everything at no cost to me. He looked at outlets equipment that had gone bad, A/C units etc. He was at the house for the better part of 5 hours. In the end I ended up having around 20k in damage.

That's when things got fun with All-State. They sent me a check for the first round of damages with diminished value then I had to buy the replacement items and submit the receipts to them to get the full replacement value. I actually pay an extra premium to get the full replacement value so why should I have to be out of pocket anything is what I figured. All-State said that this is the standard.

With this said and having gone through this I would recommend you have someone who is familiar with lightning damage come check things out. It sounds like yours wasn't as bad as mine but you just never know until you start finding things that don't work.

Jeremey
 
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