h a l f b a k e r y"It would work, if you can find alternatives to each of the steps involved in this process."
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Everybody tells you to disconnect electronic devices during a thunderstorm, but what to do if you are not at home? When I saw the disconnect system in the link the mental lightning flashed. Put a combined water and optical sensor on your roof. When the sensor gets wet and detects flashes all plugs on
electronic equipment pop out of the wall.
Pop out plug
http://www.kussmaul.com/ejector.htm [kbecker, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
UK Lightning Detector
http://www.meteorol...k/asp/lightning.asp Output from a PC based lightning detector [oneoffdave, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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Well, I'm sure our fellow bakers will find something to comment on, but there's sometimes I'd want this. |
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The only strike-storm I've ever suffered from took out the electric fence box and my phone answering machine - everything else was OK. There was a burn mark on the side of the house....The horses were completely bored by the whole thing, go figure.... |
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+ for the idea. But would there be a way to somehow wire this sensoring device to the main circuit breaker for the house? Would this make a difference? If the circuit breaker is off and appliences still pluged in, could lightning short them out? |
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[vOrtexx] You could wire in a main breaker with a huge contact gap but a lot of lightning damage these days does not come through the mains. Those are nicely protected. If you live in the US in a rural area you probably have a transformer can at your house. It offers near 100% isolation against lightning strike on the incoming high voltage line. |
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It is the ornamental plastic lamp on your driveway that catches just a fraction of the lightning and routs it straight into your house. |
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Those are the rational arguments. The emotional argument is that I would just love to see those plugs fly. |
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The best sensor to use would be a lightning detector and set it ot disconnect when the storm comes within a cretain radius of your home. Most pc based ones tell the differenc between cloud-cloud and cloud-ground strikes. An example can be found at the link. |
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can you not get it to check weather.com for bad weather where you are ? |
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What about using a relay or something to cut the power? |
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So, it doesn't turn the car off in bad weather... |
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