Panel took a direct lightning hit outside Boise last Thursday

I was installing a new keypad in a basement when the homeowner runs down saying there's smoke coming from the closet. Ran up and the main board was fried black and melting the plastic housing. Turns out the previous installer ran the phone line from the attic straight to the panel with no surge protection. Had to rip everything out and redo the whole system with proper suppressors at the demarc and inside. Took 14 hours and the homeowner's insurance covered it. How do you guys handle lightning claims - do you push for full rewires or just board swaps?

2 comments

2 Comments

johnthompson15d ago

Yeah you kinda lost me at "phone line from the attic straight to the panel" - phone lines don't usually carry enough current to fry a main board that bad unless there's major voltage induction from the strike nearby. More likely the strike hit the AC power feed or ground wire coming into the house and jumped over. Still a mess either way though, bet that 14 hours was brutal.

riverhill14d ago

Throw the whole "not enough current from phone lines" thing out the window. I've seen a nearby strike induce enough voltage through a 50 foot cat5 run to vaporize traces on a board clean off. It doesnt take direct contact, its about the magnetic field collapsing and dumping all that energy back through the wire pair. You get a big enough EMP from a cloud to ground hit and even a shielded cable can couple enough juice to cook components. So yeah, that phone line absolutely could have been the path, especially if the installer used cheap untwisted quad wire.