Question Where to begin with lightning strike damage?

[Thebrycester]

Lightning struck house at 7am today, all TV's plugged into surge protectors are fried, PS4 pro is fried. All appliances are fine, PC monitor is fine, but my two year old built PC won't turn on. Asus tuf x570 Mobo rgb lights are on still, but the power button does nothing. Was thinking either the PSU or Mobo is fried but if the PSU is fried how would those lights be on still? I don't have any other PC to test parts on besides a really old dell optiplex so I can't just swap PSUs or parts at all.

 

[kanewolf]

Lightning struck house at 7am today, all TV's plugged into surge protectors are fried, PS4 pro is fried. All appliances are fine, PC monitor is fine, but my two year old built PC won't turn on. Asus tuf x570 Mobo rgb lights are on still, but the power button does nothing. Was thinking either the PSU or Mobo is fried but if the PSU is fried how would those lights be on still? I don't have any other PC to test parts on besides a really old dell optiplex so I can't just swap PSUs or parts at all.

Start with a call to your insurance agent. Take pictures of any visible damage. Get a roof inspection. Contact an electrician for any damage to the power infrastructure.

 

[USAFRet]

An affected PSU is not necessarily all On or all OFF.
Same with the motherboard.
Partial fail is certainly possible.
Or, could be one or more cables or connections from the PSU.

Only way to really test is to swap in a known good part.

 

[Karadjgne]

Call insurance company. Dont take anything apart for diagnosis, the moment you touch or change anything, you void any claim on that item.

Make a price list of All the combined parts value to replace, give that to the agent. It got hit by electrical surge from lightning. Consider it 100% fried. (until proven otherwise).

The agent has 2 options, full replacement value, or insist on sending to repair shop. If repair shop, it's on You to insist on exact or at minimum, equitable components. No $50 white-in house brand replacement psus thank you, unless what you have is equitable to a $50 white in-house brand psu.

As to other stuff, roofing, electrical etc, get the agent to authorize or set that up, then they get the bill, otherwise you'll be paying the bill. Most insurance companies will fight you on that, cuz they don't want to pay for anything out of their control. They can and will claim that you got the electrical inspection/repairs, they didn't, so they shouldn't have to foot the bill.

You pay them, in affect that means they work for you, so make them do the work. Anything you take on personally is outside the scope of their involvement.

 

[USAFRet]

all TV's plugged into surge protectors are fried, PS4 pro is fried

Given that, start with your insurance company.

My lightning strike from 2020 only killed off parts that did not rise to the level of my deductible.

 

[dwd999]

I would be surprised if any insurance company covers a lightning strike. Usually there's an exclusion for "act of God" events like this. But he should definitely contact them to receive a legal reply. He also needs to reevaluate his surge protector capacity since the ones he had didn't seem to work.

 

[Karadjgne]

Surge protectors don't work. Not the usual ones you buy in Walmart etc. They are just plain power strips with an automotive breaker.

Those breakers are amperage tripped. The metal spring heats up over a period of time with amperage use, because of the resistance in the metal. When it gets soft enough, another spring pushes on it and pops it in the other direction, breaking the connection. The higher the amperage, the shorter the time period.

Their design is to stop the user from over-drawing the house line, not the other way around. The only thing they are really successful at is giving users a false sense of security.

Household breakers are rated for 10Kv before they'll trip usually. You'd need to have a whole house surge arrester parked on the mains panel to have any hope of stopping a lightning strike surge as they shunt excess voltage to ground before it gets out of tolerances.

 

[kanewolf]

A direct lightning strike will cause significant damage to electrical and nonelectrical items in the home. In many instances, this will start a fire, ..

Yes. If it hadn't been raining so hard, our house might have burned down. But the rain put out the fires that were started from the antenna guy wires ...