Ask HN: My house just got hit by lightning and it fried the PSU in my computer
36 by TowerTall | 31 comments on Hacker News.
If everything is wired correctly in my house, should all equipment attached to my UPS have survived this with no impact or is a direct lightning strike so powerful that even high-quality home-grade UPS must give up? My computers were connected to an UPS surge projector. Various kitchen machinery and extension sockets that was not doesn't work anymore. The neighbor's TV blew. There was a bright white flash inside of my living room, just under an open window and directly above the my UPS surge protector and then all my devices turned off including the surge projector. The PSU in one of the computers is gone, but not the motherboard and rest. I was sitting on the concrete floor in the middle of the room watching it happen. I live in Thailand in the middle of a big flat coconut groove with only two houses. Except for the palm trees, my house is the tallest structure in a 200 x 200 meters (300 feet)+ area and we have frequent huge thunder storms, but this one was in a category on its own. It made my concrete walls tremble. It was so intense. Spectacular show by nature. Only two months ago, I bought a socket outlet tester. It reported that my sockets was not grounded. I got an electricians out to fix that. I suspect this is the reason why the lightning chooses me. We have frequent big thunderstorms and haven't had this issue before, but now there is a ground connection. I don't know if there is a proper grounding rod. There is a cable going from the house into the ground, but I don't know what it is attached too. The rest of the electric installation is amateur's business so could be connected to nothing. The house is a long-term rental and the electric installation came with it, but I can change it regardless of it's is a rental. The electricity doesn't even come directly from the power company's cables. It goes in to the owners house, where the meter is. From there they have pulled a 200 meter cable into ours. There is a fuse box in my house. Any suggestions on what to do next? A big metal stick somewhere in the garden?
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