Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => Broadband Technology => Topic started by: Weaver on March 03, 2016, 11:52:39 PM
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Have you had any damage to kit as a result of a lightning strike, near-miss or surge or similar electrical storm-related event?
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Not ever had any physical damage to kit. Ive had a Voyager 2100 that went weird after a lightening surge and got all confuddled when it came back up. It was ok after a manufacturers reset though.
I think the scariest thing I had was when using the phone during a lightening strike. It wasn't full on strike but more of static burst & shock that made me drop the phone. My next door neighbour came knocking as they'd been sat in their conservatory and thought they'd seen my house take a direct hit , but everything seemed ok aside from it tripped the downstairs electrics. Next day we realised it had actually struck one of my trees.
Surprisingly, the silver birch actually lived, but bore a large black scorch mark and hole which was later put to use by wildlife. About a year or so ago though dad cut that part off, as it started to decay and any new growth only came from underneath.
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I was looking after a VAX/VMS system some time back, in a building that had (as I vaguely recall) metal-clad walls and at least a partly metal roof.
One morning there was a loud bang and a simultaneous flash outside, the lights flickered and I could taste metal in my mouth. Lightning!
I then started to get calls as to what had happened to the computers?
A number of devices connected to the thickwire ethernet had died; curiously (thankfully!) mostly lower cost devices like DECservers [terminal multiplexers] rather than the VAX computers themselves.
Also once visited a house that had had a lightning strike and it had taken out an internal dialup modem. No physical damage but it stopped working after the strike.
That house was also directly under a high voltage power line supported on pylons, one side effect of this was that the CRT computer monitor would flicker violently.
Regardless of the (perceived) negative health effects of such radiation, it was unsettling (also the hum!) and I was glad I didn't live there.
Ian
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And slightly related : a few years back, one evening the lights began to flicker, then the TV and hifi started blinking and clicking, and this lasted for a minute or two before the power failed completely.
When I tried to phone the power company, I had a dial tone with loud buzzing, and the dial tone and buzz gradually faded out to a dead line.
I went outside, expecting to see total darkness but only a few houses were affected, so went up to the nearby phone exchange expecting to see that in darkness, but it wasn't. I reported the telephone and electrical faults.
Next day it turned out that the mains cable under the pavement nearby had burnt out, and taken out the telephone cables that were running very close to it.
Power was restored several days before the phone was :o
The mad power fluctuations prior to complete power cut killed my ex-rental hifi midi system, which never worked again.
Ian
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Many years ago I saw a dial-up modem fry in a thunderstorm. I was using it at the time, and I saw blue flashes coming from it. Needless to say, it didn't work afterwards, but nothing else was damaged.
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I've attended a number of jobs locally over the years where houses have had direct lighting strikes which has caused sockets to explode from walls etc - A number of these have had what we consider to be poor earth connection/undersized on the incoming mains head which no doubt increased the affects.
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I'll put in a bit of humour. I crave forgiveness :).
Fifty years ago I was courting my wife, and once a month we stayed at her mother's. There had been a strike and the chimney got it. On the lounge floor was a lot of soot and a disc of, "It Really was Such a Night".
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Have you had any damage to kit as a result of a lightning strike, near-miss or surge or similar electrical storm-related event?
Both from nearby lightning, i.e. no actual strike on or near our property.
(1) Took out a BT telephone answering machine, no other damage
(2) Took out microfilter and DSL router, both had actual components blown apart with bits lying loose inside the cases. On that occasion the answering machine was unharmed.
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@Renluop, you are forgiven :D
I've known people blame lightning for damage, and even claim off insurance when it could easily be avoided.
Specifically, a friend with burglar alarm with maintenance contract. It was obviously hyper-sensitive because any electrical storm for miles around would bring on its 'fault' light, requiring £50 or so for engineer visit to reset. Even after the 3rd or 4th occurrence in as many years, the engineer's diagnosis was always 'lightning damage', and advice to reclaim it from household insurance. >:(
About the same time I installed a DIY alarm myself, it was also very sensitive and kept crashing. A call to the maker's helpline resulted in a surge arrestor for the mains supply, and anti-static covers for the buttons. No more 'lightning strikes' at all, after that. :)
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never witnessed any domestic damage but at work i've seen a POE switch get fried as it didnt have any surge protection or UPS. During the same event, a small workshop office nearest where the lightning hit closest to, PoE Cisco IP phone popped and the PC it was connected via ethernet to had to eventually get replaced due to the weird motherboard related issues it started having
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I've witnessed shed-loads of electrical storm damage on other peoples homes and equipment. But one event I didn't actually witness but brings home the power of such storms, is when the ex-landlord of my 'Local' was upstairs one evening supping his brew whilst sat in the enormous bay-windows the pub has, watching the electrical storm outside ............... then next thing he was being awakened by his wife shouting his name ............ he was led on the floor on the opposite side of the room.
Yup, the bays had metal frames and had been the subject of a direct strike. Dave (The landlord) was shaken up, but with no injuries other than aches and strains. He has a completely different approach to lightning events now ..... as you would. ;) ;D
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@Renluop, you are forgiven :D
I've known people blame lightning for damage, and even claim off insurance when it could easily be avoided.
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It probably got hit as house was on the heights of S E London. As to insurance "nooh, nooh!", connected to profession.
Lovely place to live with wonderful views!
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About 15 years ago nearby - this is rural area.
In the days of dial up
Direct strike on a oak tree.
Surge travels down though tree to about 15 ft up where it exploded outwards from the tree.
So there was a huge amount of bark and other wood debris on the floor
plus the tree left "tottering" I think is the word.
We are not talking about a small oak here -a proper fully grown mature tree.
I walked underneath some hours later and saw the mess on the ground spread around and at first I could not figure out why and how and what - until I looked up.... and decided that staying around underneath it was not a good idea.
It also blew every single modem in about a 0.25 mile range
Another occasion was a work in an engineering factory again a direct hit on a nearby assembly building overnight. This is in the 1980's so lots of "dumb" monitors in the next door staff offices connected to mainframe computers. Computing staff were busy for days replacing all the blown monitors.
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It probably got hit as house was on the heights of S E London. As to insurance "nooh, nooh!", connected to profession.
Lovely place to live with wonderful views!
I wasn't suggesting yours was an 'unnecessary' case, wasn't commenting on your earlier post. I was simply smiling at/with your humour, before 'moving on'. :)
Don't get me started on Insurance though. These days you are damned if you do claim, and damned if you don't claim. If the insurance finds out somebody suffered damage, didn't bother claiming and and didn't tell them, even if it was minor, I think they can get sometimes awkward over 'non-disclosure'. And in this age of big databases, and all-encompassing (non)privacy policies, they probably know things about our past that we ourselves have long-since forgotten. >:(
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I lost a HG533 a couple of years ago. There was a strike extremely close to us (loud bang woke everyone up). Went downstairs in the morning and saw the router's LEDs flashing randomly. No connectivity. There was no visible!e damaged on the outside, nor any burning smells. The NTE/5A and MK3 SSFP were both fine.
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Has the advent of FTTC put an end to the lightning strike problem?
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At home we have been struck twice, the first time we lost 2 PC's, a router and a TV (presumably due to the power surge). The first event was what made me go out and buy a load of UPSes, surge protectors and a NAS (we lost some family photos)
At work, I was once working at a Natural Gas Terminal in Yorkshire (a large installation on the coast-line where the gas comes ashore from the North Sea). The terminal took a direct lightening strike and the surge completely destroyed the Control System in spite of the all the protection systems we had. The sound was extraordinary, like a bomb going off. It took 3 months to fix.
Something to take seriously, in my experience.
Chunks
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Has the advent of FTTC put an end to the lightning strike problem?
Nope .............. only when it's a fully FTTP network will it abate. Hmmm ?? Is there a debate in there somewhere ?? ;) ;) ;D
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Just been fixed after quite a major lightning issue here. Last Tuesday night there was some thunder during the night, didn't sound specially close but in the morning the DSL was bad and phone line noisy. Shortly after I reported that there was much more serious thunder and lightning killing our line altogether. Looks as if one pole along the road took a direct hit, the aerial cable was blown to pieces and basically bits of wire everywhere including bursting out of the sheath of the cable running down the pole. Openreach replaced our master socket and filter just as a precaution, although the line was still off with little chance of a quick fix.
Checking for updates after a couple of days the fault was parked as "beyond reasonable control" with no engineer appointments available.
Everything's back working again today, OR guy said they've had to replace a mile of underground cable along the public road. So far damage at our house consists of one basic analogue phone stone head (connected in place of our normal phone to check the noisy line, and remained connected during the big hit). Two out of four Ethernet ports on the router are dead, as is the Ethernet on the printer. One powerline adapter dead as well. I don't of course know if the master socket or filter were hurt since OR took the old ones away. Next door's 582N router blew it's power supply.
The odd thing was that DSL worked during most of the time the phone line was out of service, it ran between 1300 and 1800K downstream, and only 64K upstream. Sometime with only 1dB noise margin upstream.
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I've had kit killed both in my previous house and this one by nearby lightning strikes.
The first one, I was looking out of the bedroom window, watching the storm, when lightning struck the telephone pole right in front of us. I nearly fell over in shock! The modem/router, switch and a NIC in one PC were completely dead. Another motherboard-embedded NIC went dodgy within a few weeks so include that MB too.
Just months after we moved here, a strike that sounded right overhead in the middle of the night killed my next modem/router and another switch. No PC damage that time though.
After that I put a fibre link from the modem in the hallway to the switch rack in the loft, using a fibre converter for the modem end. I need to get another now though. My new modem for my FTTC is also connected with copper to the LAN for reading the stats. I'm just hoping there isn't another strike while I sort things out.
I've never even thought of it before, but no actual phones were harmed. Hmm.
I used to support a few local schools' ICT departments, and one day I was due to visit one for some general maintenance. I got a panicked call from them as I was on my way, asking me to hurry. They had an Ofsted inspection that day, and had been boasting about their new IT infrastructure. Overnight it had been taken out by a direct lightning hit, with melted wires and network sockets, blown switches etc. Not good timing! Most of the PCs survived though.
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About 8 yrs ago at around 6 in the morning, I was listening to the thunder and lighting whilst l dozing in bed, it seamed to be getting further away, then all of a sudden, bang the house jumped into the air all the lights came on, sound and flash were inseparable, adrenalin went straight to max, other half jumped on me :o , so we cautiously got out of bed and looked around the house, a few extra cracks around the walls but nothing major, was looking around the hall and noticed the phone line was just a black sooty line up the wall finishing with a black puff ball where it joins the outside cable, jelly crimps were well cooked along with the master socket. The PC was plugged into a surge/lighting arrestor socket extension.
My pc which was only 10 days old :o had bitten the dust. Modem was cooked, Tele was alright and the Thompsen freeview box! but vcr died. oh and replace all the light bulbs.
I think it was friday morning because got home and rang BT to report a fault. They came Saturday morning, Engineer was in our street all day repairing cooked phone lines, nearly everyone had lost their Sky dishes (fried LNB's) boxes etc, BT man said that lighting had hit the main transformer to our road and lighting had followed the earth thru to everyones electrics and back up to the connected phone lines.
Having just spend a grand on my pc, I was a bit put out by the insurance companys response, so I told them to ring BT to find out how extensive the damage to our street, so eventually they sent a big check to cover the cost of a new pc.
To this day our phone extention line still remains disconnected due to damage.
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2014 we had a strike that apparently struck at sea and ran to land frying the nearest house's wiring completely and you could track the damage as it got further away we had blue sparks from wall sockets fried comp and router main phone socket was in pieces the size of a pea ( which BT wanted bagging up as proof :lol: ) next door neighbour was hit on the back of his head by his master socket :)
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Circa 2005-ish, I was in the upstairs bathroom when, with no warning of an approaching storm, there was a simultaneous flash and bang, and I saw a blue streak travel diagonally across the floor from corner to corner.
No structural damage, but the casualties were a Statesman phone, caller display unit, router, and a sooty master socket. The DECT phone was OK!
Back in the late 70s, one of my TXE2 exchanges seemed to be in a 'thunder alley' - something to do with the topology of the area I presume. It was a regular occurrence to change a couple of dozen or so welded reeds in the reed relays after a storm.