T&L Publications

Hi all.
A lightning rod is supposed to attract and provide an electric path to discharge/conduct the lightning bolt to ground. Please correct :

- If there is no lightning rod somewhere around/above a dwelling, there is less chance that a lightning bolt will strike onto the dwelling, right?
- If there is no lightning rod somewhere around/above a dwelling, a lightning bolt that strikes onto the dwelling will make a lot of damage, right ?
- If there is a lightning rod somewhere around/above a dwelling, there is a greater chance of lightning bolts striking it instead of onto other surrounding dwellings/trees/structures, right ?
- So having a lightning rod will likely cause more frequent pants soiling from its thunder, but not a burnt home, right ?

If the lightning rod usually made of a copper tip and copper braid cable ending buried to ground is replaced with a plan iron rod all the way buried to ground... say about half inch diameter; -as the reinforcing bars for construction- will the above behaviors also apply ?

If the lightning rod is made of -say half inch diameter copper tubing- all the way buried to ground, will the above behaviors also apply ?

No
Yes
Above, yes
Not burned home

(Longer answer wiped by internet.)

Try some more today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod seems pretty informative

Is the rebar part of above construction? If yes then No, could break the concrete during a strike. If no then still no due to rust and iron has a higher resistance than copper, even without rust.

Cheers,

also.... lightning rods do not attract lightning..lightning was gonna strike anyway.. the rod just happens to be there to control where it goes..
i have been to a high voltage museum that demonstrated this before..
in Europe all building are mandatory to have lightning rods on buildings, houses , barns etc.. it has been several decades that anything has been burned down because of lightning strikes. damage possibly, but burned down no..
here in the states you hear about stuff burned down all the time because of lightning strikes.
i have them on my house, and i had a direct strike a few years ago, and only damage i had was some tripped breakers from the high EMI of the strike,,but i did inspect the attic, house and under house before i re-energized the breakers.. and was nothing damaged or destroyed. so i am a firm believer of them. just last week another condo was burnt up..20 units.. from lightning strike.
almost every year i hear of this.. crazy that the builders don't include this when they build the units.. to me it is stupid not to make it mandatory. and lightning rod systems are not crazy priced either.. they are simple enough also that anyone with some common sense could do it..

Gentlemen, what we need to do is develop a system whereby the electrical energy of the clouds is captured and safely transmitted to a storage device on the ground for later use.

Check these out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvestin ... ing_energy

Ask Dr. Webber: Can Lightning Be Used as a Source of Energy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLeDs6fKLcs

Catching Lightning in a Bottle' - Unimpossible Missions - GE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzz3d2AMrRQ


Signed: Janitor Tzap

Jwax >>> that's been tried many times and always fails, there is nothing that can handle that much power and store it without being destroyed. government tried it a few times way out in desert, big warehouse full of caps etc,, and each time it was destroyed..i do not see how it would ever be possible to capture and store millions of volts, and thousands of amps of current in a instant..
consider the distance of a lightning bolt,, no insulator on earth can begin to handle that..

O, I think someone could make something to capture some power from lightning if there were commercial reward, I believe the harder problem is convincing lightning to predictably, repeatably and reliably cooperate and strike more than twice in the same spot. No place on earth has lightning every day. I understand its frustrating for researchers to capture even one strike for study.

Not trying to catch the thousands of volts and amps in a strike, but seems the approach would be to siphon off the charge before it got large enough to make the bolt. "Collect" the charge as it is being created, and send that power to ground storage. We need a charge antenna.
Maybe tuned to the 8 Hz resonant frequency of the earth that Tesla talked about.

Talk about the commercial value? How's about free energy?

How about a drone blimp that floats around following severe weather and collects energy from large plates on its surfaces or with trailing sails and then beams energy to a base station truck using microwaves which stores it in a combination of batteries and spinning masses. I see a Sci-Fi world coming into focus but still does not sound commercially profitable compared to burning some coal or garbage.

But seriously, there are ways to harvest energy but even though the source does not charge you a fee, the end user equipment is where the costs lie. Nothing is free, it should be a law of Physics (well I suppose the thermodynamics laws qualify)

I predict we can have low power perpetual electronics devices that are powered off of environmental electrical noise but they will be limited to clocks and intermittent sensors and tagging devices probably.

What I know about the lightning .....
Check for home owner insurance discounts, like for an alarm or fire protection. For a lightning rod, usually there are none.
Often rods are found on old farm houses and tall smokestacks.
On tall buildings they use antennas!

One time lightning struck the ground outside, came in through the cast iron septic pipe, leaving a divot where it arced through the concrete and burned a scar on a plugged in electric drill that was laying on the floor. Yea for the ground. Another hit it blew the photocell gff the top of a yard lamp and it landed on the back deck, one garage door opener opened the door than stopped working, 3 GFCI were toasted and a Heathkit chime clock now only says 'ding'

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work. (Mark Twain)
Ever wonder how fast lightning would travel if it didn't Ziz-Zag?
Lightning does what lightning wants.

Yup,
Lightning is one strange phenomena.

I had to go pickup a VCR for repair at this guy's house that was hit by lightning.
The house had forced air heating & air conditioning.
From what I saw, the lightning had struck one of the outside fresh air intake ducts.
Jumped from the air intake duct on the second floor to his shag rug.
Then burned it's way across the rug to get to the AC plug on the other side of the room.
Which then took out the breakers in his fuse box in the basement.

More recently I've had to replace my Well Pump because of an indirect hit by lightning.
It was weird.....
The lightning struck the ground nearby, and put a hole in the plastic pipe fitting coming from the pump.
{The untreated water coming up from the well has a high Iron content}
$6K worth of damage.
Luckily my home owner insurance covered it.

As for lightning as a power source......
It is currently just not practical.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

usually if you have lightning strikes that hit in and take out stuff in a house as you ( Janitor ) described, sounds like there was not a good ground for the lightning to go to.. so it found its own path.. that's another reason i like the rods on my house,,
my rods are grounded on 2 sides of the house..beginning of the string and end of string..
the EMF from close strikes have tripped breakers before,, i only lost a wall wart, that was connected to a door bell and the button was on the gate. it blew the wall wart off the wall, but that was it.. the wiring was still ok,, even the led in the door bell button was ok,, lightning is indeed weird..

i been to this museum of high voltage in Germany, it is a great place, i like to go there each time i visit..
check out the video.. in German of course, but you will see some great demos
https://youtu.be/k8lXOnsvD80

As a footnote, I added a service rated surge arrestor, right on the panel. So far.....so good!

Seems lightning was listening- Had a strike very near the house and the home pc decided to die the way mother boards die, silent but deadly. No visible signs, but will not turn on. Power supply OK, but as soon as it is plugged into the mother board, power supply shuts down. Toast.
Yeah- new pc and a hefty surge suppressor.