Lightning protection

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peteys

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I live in the Northeast and we get some serious lightning. Do you guys unplug your gear when there's a storm? I've been dropping some serious money, for me, on equipment and have not been unplugging my gear. It's just seems like a pain but maybe I should. What's the consensus. I know people on this forum have some nice gear. Do you have a protection plan in place for this, other than power strips; which is what I'm using now.

Christian
 
I plug all my stuff into various Richard Gray Power Company gear (from 400's to Pole Pig to the Sub Station...) I feel safe w/ that set up. We have BIG TIME lightning in central Tx too!
 
I have all of my equipment plugged into various PLC's, all of which offer surge protection. I am not sure any of these even claim to protect from lightning strikes. All of the manufacturers of these PLC's say the only way to be safe is to unplug. I have done this a couple of times recently here in North Texas where we have had no summer due to almost daily thunderstorms.
 
In addition to surge protectors, some power companies offer meter-based whole-house surge protectors. Here in Tampa (lightning capital of the world), Tampa Electric offers the "Zap Cap" meter protector (which is manufactured by Meter Treater, Inc... http://www.metertreater.com). I pay ~$5/mo for the device, PLUS use surge protectors for ALL my electronics.

Regardless, you need to remember that lightning can also enter via other pathways... phone, cable, internet connection, ground, or just via a DIRECT HIT. When a major storm hits, and I'm home, I still unplug my audio components.

For those of you using computer-based servers (Squeezebox, others), with a WIRED network, don't forget to add appropriate surge protection. For that reason, I use a glass Toslink connection from my Squeezebox to my audio setup, to keep everything electrically isolated.
 
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peteys said:
I live in the Northeast and we get some serious lightning. Do you guys unplug your gear when there's a storm? I've been dropping some serious money, for me, on equipment and have not been unplugging my gear. It's just seems like a pain but maybe I should. What's the consensus. I know people on this forum have some nice gear. Do you have a protection plan in place for this, other than power strips; which is what I'm using now.

Christian
Click to expand...
I use RIchard Gray Substation (240v), Richard Gray 1200 with one of these http://powergy.com/products.aspx on the breaker box.
 
peteys said:
I live in the Northeast and we get some serious lightning. Do you guys unplug your gear when there's a storm? I've been dropping some serious money, for me, on equipment and have not been unplugging my gear. It's just seems like a pain but maybe I should. What's the consensus. I know people on this forum have some nice gear. Do you have a protection plan in place for this, other than power strips; which is what I'm using now.

Christian
Click to expand...

If it's really bad outside, I always unplug the electronics. I also unplug everything when I go on long trips.

Erik
 
There can be some severe lightning storms in the Tampa Bay area but they mostly occur during the summer. I take precautions similiar to Sleepysurf including the Zap Cap system from the local power company. The only surefire protection against a nearby lightning strike is to uplug your system from the wall outlets if a storm is in the area. There is no surge protection that is going to save your gear from a direct strike producing a gazillion joules (whatever a joule is) but may help if it's a hit down the road where the surge is not so bad.

During the summer I get in the habbit of unplugging my system If I'm going to leave the house for a while. The sun may be out wen you leave the house but you may come home to a thundering downpour, especially in the afternoon.

In the past 4 1/2 years I only had one incident from lightning and that to my pre-pro that must have been damage from a lightning surge that took out the underground TV cable when it hit my neighbors palm tree next door.

The strike hit the palm tree next door and then down to the TV/internet cable nearby. The surge through the cable must have traveled into my cable box and then to my pre-pro. What was strange was that my cable box survived but the pre-pro got knocked out. I sent the pre-pro to the store I bought it from and they sent it to the manufacturer for repair under warranty. The manufacturer also upgraded the unit to the latest model while it was there and it's been as good as new ever since. By the way, the store was a Tweeter store.

The 30 foot tall palm tree died in two weeks and had to be removed.

Has anyone ever heard of someone collecting from the guarantee that Monster Cable offers with thier power conditioner gear?
 
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risabet said:
There is no switch, relay, MOV, etc. the can protect you gear from a lightning strike. I always unplug my gear during our rare thunderstorms. Check out the power generated by an average lightning strike.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Lightning_Power
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right! We're talking about an arc of current across 3-5 miles of wet air... any possible path is going to carry an immense amount of current for way longer than it takes to fry electronics before the switch can disconnect. The mere fact that the switch is a physical device and has to move to open means that it can't do its job.

The main misconception I think people have is that lightning rarely goes "through" anything in the house, but if it strikes nearby it sucks electrons out of everything in the area, like a hole in a space station would suck air out so fast as to make wind in a closed room.

I used to work as a service tech for a home security company and I've seen when lightning has STRUCK a house, there's nothing that carries a current left in it.
 
I have the Richard Grey 400 pro and a lightning strike near, not direct, but near the house fried a Carver M-500t that was plugged into it. Since then, I have found out that that particular unit conditions, but it is NOT a surge protector [Great improvement on the sound front, though]. Other RG models do offer more protection.

That said, a direct lightning strike will fry or bypass any surge protector out there, no matter the location. Fact. End of story.

Mother nature can send a "spark" that can easily "jump" two feet. I have seen a similar spark happen when a factory main line was being reconnected, first attempt failing, that's a tiny, tiny fraction of what Mother Nature can deliver.

Only difference is that she [Mother Nature] doesn't care what path she takes. Phone line, cable, tree, whatever. The spark I saw was being repaired because of a squirrel that apparently had a bad day.
 
treitz3 said:
I have the Richard Grey 400 pro and a lightning strike near, not direct, but near the house fried a Carver M-500t that was plugged into it. Since then, I have found out that that particular unit conditions, but it is NOT a surge protector [Great improvement on the sound front, though]. Other RG models do offer more protection.

That said, a direct lightning strike will fry or bypass any surge protector out there, no matter the location. Fact. End of story.

Mother nature can send a "spark" that can easily "jump" two feet. I have seen a similar spark happen when a factory main line was being reconnected, first attempt failing, that's a tiny, tiny fraction of what Mother Nature can deliver.

Only difference is that she [Mother Nature] doesn't care what path she takes. Phone line, cable, tree, whatever. The spark I saw was being repaired because of a squirrel that apparently had a bad day.
Click to expand...


Craig: Has anyone ever heard of someone collecting from the guarantee that Monster Cable offers with thier power conditioner gear?
Click to expand...

Not Monster but Panamax is the company which comes to mind here.

I had a small Panamax surge protector which my equipment was hooked through, power for some stereo equipment and the computer, and cable modem. A piece of my stereo equipment, Audio Research LS-15, was fried by a nearby lighting strike. In addition, my hardware firewall was fried, my CRT Monitor was left with a half blue/green screen and the rest normal while the TV set in my daughters room was also magnetized by the strike. The TV set downstairs under where my Stereo is located was magnetized also with a Blue/green screen. Well, the PC monitor has a built in demagnitizer but I had to use the industrial strength demagnitizer from work to clear up the other two tv sets which would not completely remove the blue/green tint from the CRT.

Back to the topic, the strike had not come thru the power line or cable, Nothing in the power circuit was damaged...no transformer, diodes, caps, nothing at all. Instead it jumped through the air into the circuit of the LS-15 which is located two feet from the window and found some tasty electronics inside, completed its circuit continuing thru my firewall, the PC monitor, daughters TV set then downstairs thru the TV set there...all these items are in a nice neat row if you connected the dots of damage. I know first hand because I was sitting at my desk using the computer five feet away from the very window the lightning came through...everything turned blue white and the air cracked at the same instant as the light...all I could say was Wow a few seconds after it happened!

When I filed a complaint of damage from lightning with panamax and sent them the surge protector, they did not find anything wrong with it. So they "could not" pay for repair to damaged equipment as a result of lightning. However panamax did offer me a brand new M5300-EX no charge...MSRP $550. The LS-15 was sent out to Audio Research for repair since it did not work at all...cost to repair, $450...oh and I had them add a new compliment of tubes while there too.

So a lightning surge or strike does not have to come through the power or cable to cause damage...if it does the surge protector should do its job and show proof internally. In my case it was totally seperate from the surge protector. I think that was pretty resonable for Panamax and I'd say it was a stretch for them to send me a new upgraded protector for free...considering what happened.
 
Wow, that's some story and a lot of damage. That must have a been really weird to experience something like that so close.

Ideally it seems best to just unplug everything although that's not always convenient. I have some old fender amps that I just disconnected from the wall today. I'll just plug em in when I want to play them.

As far as my HT/2 channel set up, that becomes more difficult as everything is connected to the cable line, sort of. I'm not removing the cable everytime there's lightning. I guess I could just unplug all the equipment and hope the cable line doesn't get hit.
 
Speaking of lightning...a surge must have taken out my water heater yesterday. Whirlpool is sending me a new control panel and it should be here tomorrow. An easy fix I've replaced it before.

All my audio/video gear was unplugged and is fine. We've been getting lightning storms every afternoon for the past week or so. It's just something we put up with in Florida every summer.
 
Anything else amiss? If not, I doubt lightning was the culprit. Good luck with the repair.

BTW, to all, when you unplug your ML's, are you unplugging at the wall, or the IEC connection at the speaker? I do the latter, but am wondering if I might "wear out/loosen" the speaker side connection, which would certainly be a LOT harder to replace than the power cord itself.
 
ML manuals for Vantage and Depth-i advise to unplug at the wall first, not at the speaker. I don't know why but there must be a reason.
 
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