Monday I stayed at home sick. I had a pretty serious stomach flu (and I still ain’t all better yet). It just so happens that was the day my house was struck by lightning. I was sitting down on the toilet when it happened (you can fill in the terrible details).
The way it happened, a bolt of lightning hit a tree behind my house. The saturated soil acted as a conductor and the voltage from the strike traveled to my irrigation system, causing severe damage to the irrigation system, as well as my cable and power.
The current blew up my sprinkler control panel, sending pieces of the device into my roof. I was just on the other side of the wall when that happened (in the bathroom, sick) , so the noise I heard was probably the scariest thing I’d ever heard.
I was screaming “OH SHIT!”
How ironic …..
Immediately the power went out. Given that it was still down-pouring, I had no way to know what had actually happened to the house. I cleaned myself up, and comforted the dog, who was justifiably terrified. I waited about an hour before walking outside, to try to trip the main breaker outside the house.
When I got there, I noticed that more was wrong, than a simple fuse trip. I don’t have a cell phone, so I went to a neighbor’s house to call my wife, and ask her to start calling the insurance company, as well as the power company.
It turns out she was super-busy at work so she couldn’t take either of my calls. She did see the call, but didn’t recognize the number.
Since I wasn’t having luck reaching her, I found Progress Energy’s number from my neighbor and called them myself. When I finally reached someone, I was promptly warned that they were quite busy. It was going to take some time before my power was restored.
Melissa came home, and we called Progress Energy again, for a status update:
“Your service time is scheduled for .. 11:59pm
That was bad news, especially since it was so hot that night. So we made backup plans to stay at a friends house, if nobody showed up to get our power back on.
Folks did show up however, and after a few hours, and a few ideas, our power was restored. The ‘Pot’ that was sitting atop a power pole outside of our house was destroyed. Apparently, the voltage from the lightning strike managed to climb the service line to my house, and destroy the stepping mechanism 20 feet in the air.
The work it takes to replace those things is impressive. The existing pot weight 575 lbs, while the new one tips the scales at a leaner 295lbs. Why so much weight? There’s a huge copper coil in those things, and it’s all encased in oil. The oil acts as a coolant to the coils in the box. So, if oil really starts getting expensive, just remember: there’s some right around the corner!
My irrigation system is severely damaged. 3 solenoids are destroyed, there’s a break in a 1″ line in the middle of the yard, and my controller box is completely gone (I found pieces of it over 100 feet away). I got an estimate to repair today, which came in around $1,000. I really hope my insurance premium is less than that…
I had to wait around all day for Brighthouse to replace my cable service, which was also fried. The tech finally showed up around 3:30 today, and it took him about 2 hours to complete his work. When he was done, I still had no internet. Turns out, the power surge had fried my cable box, cable modem, and traveled through cat5e cable to destroy my wireless router as well.
I pride myself on having a good sense of humor. This is a great example of that. As horrible as the situation was, it’s something that I’ll be able to laugh at for a long time to come.