While lightning rods help protect a structure from direct lightning impact, a complete lightning protection system is needed to help prevent harmful electrical surges and potential fires caused by lightning entering a structure through cables and pipes. Most cities have a company that will install rods. You can usually find them by searching the internet with your city and the words lightning protection. Home & Garden, Remodeling, Maintenance & Home Decor This post may contain affiliate links.
If you buy through these links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Everyone knows how devastating a lightning strike can be. Protecting your home from powerful lightning could save your life, the lives of your family members, your home, its contents, and the electrical components that keep it running. I've paid another visit to the Victorian Queen Anne that I'm covering, and my timing couldn't have been much better.
I've learned a lot about lightning protection in the home, and you probably will too. First, I would like to give you some facts about the system being installed here in this Victorian house. The core of the lightning protection system itself is the copper cable. The copper cable is made up of 32 wound wires of 14 AWG wire.
The Victorian house will use 8 spools of cable, or around 2000 linear feet. Christian tells me he buys about 6,000 feet. Copper cable EVERY WEEK, so your wholesaler keeps busy supplying Wolf Lightning with its needs. In addition to the lightning rods, each and every one of the exposed metal vents will have a copper cable connected inside the roof (see photos), and there are a couple of dozen of them for this house.
The clamp is nailed to the beams with a copper guide, and the cable itself is also secured along the inside of the beams (and everywhere else) with copper nails to keep it flush with the wood. Are you starting to notice a topic here? Copper, copper and even more copper create a beam that leads directly to the ground in case you decide to hit the house. The Victorian house will require 10-inch outlets to the grounded circuit. I had to ask: “Why not more than 18? The answer is because the soil in which the cable is buried tends to remain moist within the top 18 inches of the ground.
The damp soil helps keep the copper cable “moist”, making it a better conductor to follow the lightning's enormous amount of electricity. So do homeowners really benefit from having a lightning protection system installed? What follows is a 26A lightning protection rating that I took from the Wolf website so you can decide for yourself whether or not a lightning protection system is worth installing, what are the advantages, how to install it, and much more. I asked Christian if professionally installed lightning protection is expensive. He said that depends on your perspective.
What does an average of 1.5 to 2% of the cost of your home sound like? It's not so bad now, is it? So you might be wondering, “How much did the lightning protection system cost for this huge Victorian Queen Anne home? Christian and I talked a bit about his wallet and I discovered that he has traveled all over the world installing lightning protection systems for some very interesting clients, including (here is the brazen presentation of names). One of the potential benefits of using lightning rods is that it provides a very economical way to protect people and property from lightning hazards. While they won't completely protect you from direct hits, they will greatly reduce the chance of being struck by lightning and limit potential damage. Lightning arresters are devices made of metal (usually copper) mounted on the roof of a building to protect it from a lightning strike.
While the price is generally less than 1% of the value of the structure, the costs of lightning protection systems vary depending on the size of the structure, location, construction, type of roof, and grounding conditions. Lightning rods can only help visible structures, so if you live in an area prone to thunderstorms and lightning strikes, make sure there is no lighting in the area before taking shelter or installing a roof lightning rod system. Riley's company, Ohio Valley Lightning Protection, will place several copper rods on the roof, connected by thick copper cables to metal stakes in the ground. .
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