Fun with lightning

[John K Jordan]

Lighting struck in my last place and I said to myself wow that was close. It struck 5' from me and hit my condenser frying compressor and capacitor.

Luckily that was it and i'm in the business so it didnt cost much.
Was the shop computer on a surge protector? Maybe a whole house surge protector wouldnt be a bad investment.they are only $125 or so and can be installed pretty easily

My shop computer was on a good-sized CyberPower uninterruptible power supply with isolation and surge protection. Nothing else on that USP was damaged (monitors, U-Phoria audio, speakers, disk drives, USB devices, jog-shuttle, Amazon Echo,...

I think the spike came in over the ethernet line:
Comcast cable -> cable modem -> ethernet to wifi router -> 300' underground ethernet cable to router in shop -> ethernet cable to computer
everything the ethernet touched past the comcast cable was fried.

I have a surge protector for the electrical panel in the shop.

JKJ

[Alan Rutherford]

...I think the spike came in over the ethernet line...

That also happened to us. Ethernet and phone cables were lying on the ground in the lowest part of the crawl space. A phone, DSL modem and the ethernet port in a computer were all damaged, despite being on a surge-protected UPS. It's a risk I had not thought of until it happened.