(Jul 8, 2019 03:46 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ] (Jul 7, 2019 11:58 PM)Leigha Wrote: [ -> ]What are your thoughts? Do you play it safe, and wait for thunderstorms to pass over, before you take a shower?
There was an era when people probably worried more about being on a non-wireless landline phone during a lightning storm. While more vulnerable time would be spent showering, otherwise it would seem as unsafe to be washing hands or dishes at a sink, or doing anything in proximity to a metal pathway.
Here's a case of a man who was struck by lightning arcing from a light switch, while sitting in his office. Minus the injury, I have some personal experience with what that is like.
We once lived for several months on a hill, in some kind of industrial shop that had been converted to a residential dwelling. During bad weather you could literally see the stuff crackling sporadically across a room or hallway in the dark, accompanied by "snapping" sounds. Still not sure whether it was issuing from metal framework, or electrical outlets, or what. Never getting struck during that period may have had something to with being careless or somewhat reckless about taking precautions in the future.
Windows are supposedly too much an insulator for the urban tales of bolts passing through them to have much validity. But they would probably shatter if struck (thus staying away from them still warranted, as if wind damage wasn't enough reason) .
Quote:once
i have had many conversations with electricians who specialise in both electronics and high voltage combined.
having an independent earth wired to your roof was their simple solution to add safety.
while in one of those houses a tree around 5 inches thick was split by lightning around 5 meters from where i was sleeping, another time a small shrub had half of it blown off by lightning only 2 meters from the corner of the room i was sleeping in.
i have also been inside with direct strikes to the roof twice
i have been a few meters away inside a house where the lightning has struck the veranda handrail (maybe 3 times)outside only a few meters away and then gone into a small tree into the ground.
1 lighting strike hit the house once and it was only because the owner who was an electrician had made a secondary breaker(board) switch fuse behind(infront) the main board and an independent earth pin that it did not blow out any people of points inside the house, only blew both breakers, (the primary and the secondary & tripped half the secondary breakers) and a light bulb.
quite possibly saved several peoples lifes.
people are far more likely to injure themselfs by operating a motor vehicle or crossing the street when they are not paying attention.
yet proper sound logical electrical standards save (easy-save)lifes
they are easy saves because people tend not to count them as near miss deaths and they are statistical quantifier death instance reductions like seat belt regulations.
it is hard to have a sane logical conversation about peoples miss placed paranoia that is lent up against something they do not wish to learn about when it fills a social connective human emotional process.
(this is very common around suburban people who lack a variety of experience in different life processes and activities)
2 things i recently pass up to be fixed
a commercial cleaner using a back pack vacuum cleaner holding a broken power cord with exposed power wires which were broken and arching so he would wiggle it with his hand to make it work and continue vacuuming.
(could have been dragged through a puddle of water as a customer walked past and killed them)
commercial cleaner plugged into a wall socket which they had pushed and pulled with the vacuum cord for many months on end until the entire socket was falling apart.
internally the socket had alloy clamp pins used to screw the plastic face plate tot he alloy wall trunking.
both alloy pins were loose and the vacuum was plugged in,
had one of the pins fallen another inch, it would have turned the wall trunking live along an entire office floor of workers.
cheap and easy to fix
chances of death from electrocution probably only around 10%
chance of electrocution by short(resulting in 10% chance of death) fault, probably only around 15%
its a numbers game
average house ? no !
properly safely wired house ? yes !
is that helpful ?