Hey guys...
@Glort: Up until about 10years ago, my back was quite good... Nowadays, things are getting to EOL I reckon, time to start putting bits back in, but that I am putting off until the very last.... Bending down, working at low levels does worry me a wee bit, but its the getting back up on my back feet that screws me over!
@Bruce: We have taken some notable strikes here in the past 25years, memorable ones indeed... The worst ones that come to mind are an instance when the Northern peak of the roof took a direct hit... that blew out every damn piece of kit in the place, including 2 fridges, tv's, microwave, entire network, pabx plus much, much more... Coupled with that, the ?air pressure? caved in a short section of roof on an adjoiner to that pitch as well.... That day I was on the upper floor and the hit was about 2m from where I was standing, fortunately no physical damage, except that I now here aliens singing when I don't wear my tinfoil hat...
The second one I remember clearly, was a ground strike about 75m from the house... At that stage we didn't have our own transformer on the pole outside, the neutral was bonded about 500m away, the earth neutral bonding at the pole had rotted away just below ground level apparently... Well, needless to say, about 20 zillion volts made its way up through my pristine db board and all of a sudden N/E differed by more than the household kit could handle.... Auto start gennie, network, pabx, microwave, you name it up in smoke....
After that I got a bit pissed off, naturally, and tied E to N in my board, in each board in fact (there is one main db board and 4 separate sub boards on the premises) .... I have also tied E/N on each of the 3 permanently connected gensets too..
I know this is not the best thing to do, but so far, a few ground strikes later, nothing major blown.... Oh yes, I neglected to mention that way before these strikes I had installed db board surge suppressors, at insistence of the insurance company, fat lot of good they did.. Having said that, its time to put on the tinfoil hat again....
Keep it sparking....
Cheers
Ed