This past Wednesday we had severe thunderstorms come through. In the afternoon when I talked to "The Boss" she said there was a lightning strike close enough that the flash and thunder were simultaneous. There was smoke in the air near the barn but she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when she went out to check for damage/fire. When I got home from work , and it was getting dark, we noticed that there were some circuit breakers tripped in the barn and a few overhead LED bulbs were dead. Double check things and replace bulbs. All good. I didn't investigate too much as there were other things to get done.
Forward to last night.
After mucking the stalls I was taking the shit cart out to the manure pile when I noticed that a section of the electric fence was down. It happens once in a while. Usually a tree limb or deer. The horses never go near it once you teach them what it does. As a matter of fact it has been unplugged for a few weeks. Anyway, I'm getting closer with the four wheeler and suddenly realize holy shit now it makes sense.
This tree is 100 yards or so from the barn and house
That ain't grizzly bear scratches.
Shit got real.
It looks like the lighting struck that pine, traveled down the tree, and blew the 2x4 with the electric fence wire off the tree. There were arc burns on the wire so I know it traveled back to the charger on the barn.
Ah ha moment.
At the barn the end of the fence wire was separated from the charger. One fuse on the input leg was completely obliterated and, as you can see, the power cord blew out against the meter. None of this was specifically noticeable until a closer CSI investigation.
Damn lucky the barn is standing. That "birds nest" is a hanging flower pot liner.
As a matter of fact, If there was a fire I would have another story about the lawn hydrant not being in service as a water source and I might lose another follower.
I guess someone was looking out for us.
Time to research lightning protecting an electric fence.
For those that saw the title to this post, a segue
Interesting and scary. My electric fence is solar/battery powered so I don't have to worry about it getting back into my barn. However, we have trees getting hit here in Georgia all the time and I'm expecting one of these days for one to come down on my fence. Hopefully the horses won't get curious. I did have lightning strike blow out my well pump control box for the second time about 3 months ago. That's getting expensive.
ReplyDeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong...
DeleteThose solar powered electric fences are supposed to have 3 six foot long grounds. I wonder if the same would work for regular non-solar powered ones? Much like a lightning rod so to speak. Perhaps our host should install a lighting rod on his barn. If I'm not mistaken, old Benjamin Franklin is the one who came up with them.
-rightwingterrorist
Glad it wasn’t worse than it was. Perhaps some sort of fusible link in the wire next go around?
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side you have a little more firewood for late winter.
I had lighting run in a cable into the TV. BLEW the TV and TUBE exploded. Then stopped. No fire just singed every where. We got home just as it did it(THANK GOODNESS). Talk about tightening your CHEEKS!!
ReplyDeleteThink of lightning as RF current. It loves capacitors and hates inductors. When a wire turns 90 degrees the arc will want to go straight. coils of wire or loops will blow out, like the short it made to the meter can. Wide flat ribbons of copper are used for grounds on transmitters, as are copper buss bars (low inductance). Maybe put some ground rods in where the wire turns a corner, or hang some loops on ground rods every so often. Give it a place to jump to, with a small gap between, like the plates of a capacitor. I've used spark plugs as spark gaps to protect equipment attached to long wire antennas. Heck, pound out a piece of copper pipe flat, and shape it like a bow tie. Attach your wire to one side and a ground stake to the other, leave a gap in the middle about a 1/4" inch apart. Shape the points to be slightly rounded, say 1/8" radius or so. That will help.
ReplyDeleteAnd putting a tinder pile under wiring, well, you know that already...
Good advice STxAR, you are familiar with HF/HA shunts (i.e., lightning arrestors)!
DeleteFolks, a good spark-gap will help with the lightning, CB and Ham use them all the time for their equipment. Since the electric fence equipment is low-current high voltage, spark gap arrestors are ideal. Have a good ground, too. Irish, it was just your luck the tree was next to the electric fence. You dodged a bullet with that one!
Lightning will follow the best path to ground, usually the tallest structure around. Was that tree the tallest? And, it's fascinating how the discharge will go underneath the cambium layer and blow it off (it generates steam during its passage!) and yet leave most of the tree intact. Certain kinds of wood are more moist in the center, which is why they blow apart instead of having surface effects. Yours was hit by a relatively LOW energy bolt!
Don't feel bad - you should see what we have to do with EMP! Nasty!!
An OCGT (old cable guy trick) is called a Florida Bypass, bond a straight wire parallel across the drip loops thereby cutting the Infinity amperage of lighting in half.
DeleteHalf of infinity can still make a mess...
RAYVET suggested a fuseable link, great idea!
Also, Ground rods are less effective in dry sandy soil.
I had a palm tree about 10 feet off the corner of my house get hit last August. From there, it induced voltages on wires all around the house and did about 8 or $10,000 worth of damage. Stuff was blown all over the house, it would jump over something and blow something else a little farther away.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a month to even find what was hit and the tree was killed. Your tree is dead, it just doesn't know it, yet.
STxAR has good advice. Spark gaps to ground on the electric fence wires are probably the best things to do.
From looking at the tree, it may survive. The damage was not that great. Most of the cambium layer (the living part of the bark) looks okay. Time will tell, say about 5 years.
DeleteBut, it will sure leave a scar!
back in the 80's, our well got hit by lightning. I thought the russians had nuked boston....
ReplyDeleteMy family wasn't as lucky, lightening hit the phone line 200 yards from the house, ran up the phone line to their box on the house blew that up and continued on to where the line was close to the door bell wire. Jumped to that and blew up the ringer in the back hall and stared a fire there. No one was home so the fire got into the attic. The local VFD came and put the fire out 3 times until the house was a total loss.
ReplyDeleteHad lightning hit our plane going into Chicago. In left wing tip, off the right. A Nun was across the aisle knitting. I think she made an afghan by the time we landed..heh.
ReplyDeleteThere's a white pine tree up the road about 50 yards from camp that was struck by lightening a long time ago. it was about 30" thick. Looked the same as the tree in your pic, at first. It's long dead and the center is finally rotted out. If I think of it, I'll take a pic next time I'm there.
ReplyDeleteNemo
Yikes! Thankfully there was no fire and that everyone is safe! That's why we have had over a hundred tress taken down over the years. One of the shorter trees still has a big, black burn mark running down it's side. Scary when lightening hits...
ReplyDeleteFrom the 'if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it" file...When I was younger, and early into doing tower and antenna work, one of the grizzled old techs told me to make sure I put a knot in the antenna lead, and 'tie' it to the antenna tower with a few wraps of tape. I asked why, and he gave me the 'lightning won't make corners' line. I said bullshit, and let it go. "You'll learn soon enough". After 2 years, I'd replaced so many blown out cables tied to tower legs that I started believing him. After replacing the ones that I'd not tied (all all the equipment attached) knots in, I realized that not all old guys are full of shit. Especially the ones that climbed 3-500' towers faster and more often than I did.
ReplyDeleteRegarding lightning arrestors for electric fences:
ReplyDeletehttp://eatonrapidsjoe.blogspot.com/2018/09/steam-punk-lightning-arrester-for.html
http://eatonrapidsjoe.blogspot.com/2018/09/steam-punk-lightning-choke.html
And a bonus link
http://eatonrapidsjoe.blogspot.com/2020/05/my-effort-to-make-it-easier-to-find.html
Irish, about 15 years ago lightning hit a large poplar near our house. It blew half of the tree into various pieces...some a 100' feet from the tree. The lightning then proceeded to a 60' x 15' concrete pad, jumped back into the soil and blew a 2' hole in the ground and flipping a swing set upside down. At the same time it traveled the rebar in the pad to a lawn hydrant on the far end of the pad...and of course...blew the hose clamp off of the hydrant water supply...long evening.
ReplyDelete"Long evening" I'm sure that's an understatement.
Delete