Do you disconnect shore power during a thunder storm?

[FishaPalooza]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wire Wrat Well yes. We try to get it at least once a year. In Florida the politicians have got the insurance industry running from the state. If you have a brand new home, 900'above sea level, you are in the positive pool. otherwise, you have to get state insurance, and it is expensive. I hazzard a guess as to what they will do to you if you approach them with a claim.

What I want to know is, where in Florida are you 900 ft above sea level?

[Wire Wrat]

That has a political answer. We cannot get regular insurance from a real company. The criteria is very unrealistic like the 900' requirement.(thats an exagration by the way) kinda like sayen you gotta stand on one foot with your left hand in the air to see if you fit in the insurance lottery. we were randomly picked to be dropped by our commercial insurance. Only filed a roof clame durring hurrican Ivan. they denied payment, so I replaced the shingles with a metal roof.(out of my pocket) now you can get state insurance and they will pay as well as the companys that were run out of the state.

[extricator]

We have had damage due to a lightning strike while camping. It was not a direct hit. While cooking breakfast on the grill under the awning, dark clouds started rolling in and shortly after the thunder and lightning. My 17yr old daughter was sitting on the camper steps and my wife and I were standing in front of our grill when lighting hit a tree right across from us. The lighting came down the tree and went into the power service for the empty site across from us. The hit was enough to scare the crap out of us. My daughter immediately screamed and fell to the ground. She kept saying she got hit, she got hit. We took her inside and checked her out for any injuries as my wife and I are EMTs. We kept an eye on her for the rest of the day. The next morning my air conditioner started acting up and all of my 12volt lights were getting dimmer. I checked my battery level and the meter showed it was low. After doing some testing I found that the strike fried my onboard inverter. Iran to wallymart and got a deep cycle charger to finish our vacation. When we got home I replaced the onboard inverter and all was well. We thank god that our daughter was not injured by the strike and from now on when a storm comes through we unplug....

[wa8yxm]

Back in my trailer days the park took a near miss.. And my Air Conditoner quit. Thankfully that was the only damage.

(I had a window unit installed, the replacement was.. Not expensive)

Unplugging is cheap insurance.. But.. It is also very inconvienent.

[W4RLR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wire Wrat Well yes. We try to get it at least once a year. In Florida the politicians have got the insurance industry running from the state. If you have a brand new home, 900'above sea level, you are in the positive pool. otherwise, you have to get state insurance, and it is expensive. I hazard a guess as to what they will do to you if you approach them with a claim.

Being 900 feet above sea level would be a great trick in Florida, considering Florida's highest point is only 345 feet ASL. But I feel your pain, having been a homeowner in Florida and being assigned to the high risk pool, even though my home was thirty miles inland and 245 feet above sea level. And no, they'll take your premium money, but will fight you tooth and nail if you have the audacity to file a claim.

Being an accidental full timer now, I've made sure my fifth-wheel is insured to the maximum amount the insurer will allow. And in case of thunderstorms and high winds, I roll up the awning, pull in the slide and if the lightning strikes are near and frequent, I switch over to inverter or fire up the generator and isolate my fiver from shore power.

[Wayne M]

The below quote is from the original post in this thread.

Lightening is the most unpredictable element there is. It does not matter if you are connected or disconnected. If it is going to take a path through your "stuff" then it is just going to happen

A friend of mine in Mississippi had a downstairs basement where around the periphery of the walls were work benches with power outlets, and on one wall was his HAM radio station. He was an engineer and worked on other peoples problem radios. In the middle of the room there was a 3 x 6' table of sorts where he would disassemble the radios. There were no wire hook-ups of any sort to this table. It was just free standing. One day while he was away, and he had taken the cover off of a radio on that free standing table, lightening hit his HAM antenna tower in the yard. The lightening came through his HAM Radio station, shot across the free standing table, entered a receptacle and took out the refrigerator upstairs.

Damage:
Ham radio - one resistor
Refrigerator - circuit board

Radio setting on free standing table: Well he described it as looking like someone took an arc welder through the middle of it. Totally destroyed.

So pull jacks up, leave them down, do whatever one has to do, but just remember the lightening will make up its own mind on where it wants to go.

Another food for thought, and I have had this discussion with electronic/electrical engineers also.

Everyone states that lightening takes the least resistance to ground. So let us say for the sake of argument that you put an 8 foot copper ground stake in the ground to ground your rv, equipment, house, etc. Now then, lightening happens to strike close by. It goes to ground. Isn't your ground stake susceptible to picking up that strike and then traveling through your grounded "stuff?" Just food for thought.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wire Wrat We live in the western end of the Florida panhandle. Lightning is a very common occureance here. Durring thunder storms, we disconnect the microwave, and computers by throwing the breaker switches at the fuse box. Our travel trailer is connected to shore power by an outlet on the side of the house. Do any of you seasoned trailer owners disconnect the shore power durring bad weather?

[thainor]

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_u...?v=GZxgYNnkBd0

This might answer some questions.