Can Lightning Strikes Ruin Electronics?

ShockAugust2015Lightning can in fact destroy electronics, telephones and any system controlled by wires or conductive material. Although unplugging all of your electronics is a great way to protect everything, this can be an enormous hassle in large homes and certainly isn’t possible if you’re away or on vacation. Whole house surge protection is a great way defend against most home lightning strikes or other unwanted electrical surges.

The science behind what happens when lightning hits a home is astonishing. This mysterious force spares some and brings destruction to others. Fortunately, there are a few precautionary steps you can to protect your home from this natural force.

What Are The Odds Of My Home Being Struck By Lightning?

The odds of your house getting struck by lightning depend largely on your location, but, on average, about 1 in every 1,000 homes across the U.S. gets hit by lightning each year, amounting to more than $1 billion in damage and averaging about $5,000 worth of damage per home. Although Virginia isn’t at the top of the list, it isn’t at the bottom either. Scary predictions from the National Lighting Safety Institute estimate the number of lightning strikes may “increase dramatically as the earth’s temperature rises.”

While the odds of your home getting struck by lightning are small (1:1,000), they’re about 100,000 times better than the odds of winning a new house in the lottery. Be smart and take a few precautions to minimize damage to your property.

What Can I Do To Protect My Home From Lighting Damage?

Whole home surge protection is a great way to shield electronics from lightning or damaging electrical surges. If you run a business out of your home, have an expensive home theater system with high end audio, or just keep priceless family photos on a desktop computer; whole house surge protection will help protect all your electronics, even an iPhone that was plugged in for a quick charge.

A whole house surge protector is a device that gets wired directly to the electric service box in your home and protects all the appliances and electronics throughout that house, as though you had an individual surge protector in every socket.

Will Insurance Companies Pay For Electronics Damaged By Lightning?

With the typical homeowner’s policy, insurance will pay to replace all electronics damaged by lightning. Underwriters consider a lightning strike to be an act of God.  Usually the insurance company will send out a representative to confirm lightning damage, and then the company will pay to have the damaged electronics replaced with equivalent alternatives. However, insurance deductibles aside, do you really have the time and energy to deal with this hassle? We can think of one or two other ways you might want to spend an afternoon, like hanging out by the pool listening to your awesome outdoor speaker system that managed to survive last week’s storm!

If you’re in the midst of a storm, it’s also a good idea to keep family members away from plumbing, sinks, telephones or anything the might be able to carry an electrical current through your home. Contact us using the button below if you have any questions about protecting electronics from lightning or would like to learn more about whole house surge protection.

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