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Lightening hit


Trippigs

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Lightening hit our new home last week and costs to get back to normal are currently estimated at $20,000+. It came in on an ATT internet cable which had not yet been buried. Nobody was hurt so we are fortunate. We have been with our insurance agency for 34 years and I am pretty comfortable they will treat us fairly. 

It damaged my beloved DH200 power amp and matching DH101 preamp which I have had since 1980. It blew fuses in my LaScala Industrials....not yet sure if anything else was damaged there. Also not yet sure about my modified AR-XA turntable.

My question is what to do about the Hafler gear.....repair or replace? There are upgrade kits available if I repair.  I figure insurance might pay ~$400 for replacement......what are some good choices?

Thanks.......Wm

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This 2 channel setup is in my workshop so I don’t know if they made any noise when the lightening hit.....they could have screamed and I would not have heard anything over the bang.

We have a house-wide power surge system that absorbed some of the current but not all. I will look into a lightening rod since we are on a ridge top with a metal roof. The electrician said the current traveled the ATT cable to the house where it jumped to the slab rebar and ran through the house. So the current kind of bypassed the electrical service box and transformer. Has anyone ever heard of such?

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5 hours ago, Trippigs said:

Lightening hit our new home last week and costs to get back to normal are currently estimated at $20,000+. It came in on an ATT internet cable which had not yet been buried. Nobody was hurt so we are fortunate. We have been with our insurance agency for 34 years and I am pretty comfortable they will treat us fairly. 

It damaged my beloved DH200 power amp and matching DH101 preamp which I have had since 1980. It blew fuses in my LaScala Industrials....not yet sure if anything else was damaged there. Also not yet sure about my modified AR-XA turntable.

My question is what to do about the Hafler gear.....repair or replace? There are upgrade kits available if I repair.  I figure insurance might pay ~$400 for replacement......what are some good choices?

Thanks.......Wm

You need to make sure you get adequate coverage from your insurance.  Likely things that aren't blown, will blow in the not too distant future.  If lightning struck something with a bunch of integrated circuits and transistors, it will likely cost you a lot more to try and fix it.  Consider the voltage is WAY over what was ever to go into those chassis, sadly.  You might get lucky fixing them on the cheap but you are probably waiting for the next component to fail.

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Lightening hit my sports car one evening.  Someone drilled holes in everything.  It must have been lightened by 200 pounds. :rolleyes:

 

But seriously, lightning is extremely dangerous and unpredictable. It’s said that lightning strikes move from the ground up; it sure doesn’t look like that in videos.  It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but my brother’s anecdotal experience in Carmel, IN with underground utilities was frequent lightning strikes taking out power to the subdivision.

 

 As others have said, some of the damage done might not be immediately apparent.  Good luck getting everything sorted.

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14 hours ago, Trippigs said:

This 2 channel setup is in my workshop so I don’t know if they made any noise when the lightening hit.....they could have screamed and I would not have heard anything over the bang.

 

 

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State Farm is doing great. They will pay a depreciated value up front and , if I buy new replacement stuff, a second payment equal to the difference between the depreciated value and the replacement costs.....in essence full value replacement. We have 5 years to file which addresses the delayed failure possibility. They allow replacement of out of production stuff with like quality and specs......so I can buy something new and equivalent to the Hafler gear. I will contact Bob Crites for some CT 125 tweeters. 

What would you buy to replace the Hafler DH200, DH101 and a Pioneer SA 7500I?

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53 minutes ago, Trippigs said:

State Farm is doing great.

Good news, glad they seem to taking car of you. There are companies who install rods on the roof with ground cable to grounding rods in the ground like on commercial buildings, but there is no guarantee lightning will hit that, it can come in another way. The best thing to do is keep good insurance and schedule things that are not covered enough by the policy. 

Good luck but it's looking good so far, and no one was hurt, your doing good. Well considering that's a crazy amount of heat and electricity no matter what it hits.

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19 hours ago, Trippigs said:

Has anyone ever heard of such?

I had lightening hit the metal flashing of my chimney one time and blow a hole in the roof.  Shingles were all over the back yard, and yes we were home when it happened.  It sounded like a grenade went off in out attic.  Somehow it jumped over into out phone and cable TV lines and took out everything that was hooked up to those circuits.  Nothing seemed to get into the electrical system though.  All damage was contained to things hooked up to the phone and cable lines.  Once it hit the tv, it got into everything that was hooked up to the tv.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Got an update for ya......insurance is still thinking about replacement value for the Hafler gear but I think they will respond positively.  It is tricky because it has not been made since ~1980 although still high quality.

On another note.....does anyone have an opinion on Integra equipment? All I know is that it is the Onkyo upper end line. The lightening also took out a moderate Pioneer VSXS520 and I wonder if the Integra DSX3 is a reasonable replacement. I need a AVR with a phono input which limits choice

Thanks so much

 

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28 minutes ago, Trippigs said:

Got an update for ya......insurance is still thinking about replacement value for the Hafler gear but I think they will respond positively.  It is tricky because it has not been made since ~1980 although still high quality.

On another note.....does anyone have an opinion on Integra equipment? All I know is that it is the Onkyo upper end line. The lightening also took out a moderate Pioneer VSXS520 and I wonder if the Integra DSX3 is a reasonable replacement. I need a AVR with a phono input which limits choice

Thanks so much

 

 

 

Do it right this time, get some toobs...........:)

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My house took a hit 10 years ago... most of the damage showed that it came in through my network (cat5) as well as low voltage lighting outside.  We get strikes on trees near the house every couple of years and sometimes there is inductive current on the network wire which causes damage.  This one blew everything connected (computers, printer, switches, remote KVM switch) but no stereo equipment was hurt since most all was unplugged at the time.  The living room system was on an old Panamax surge suppressor.  Also took out garage door openers and a few electronics plugged in without surge suppressors.  The initial damage was 8k but every appliances in the house and part of a heat pump had a problem and were replaced or repaired within the next year or two.  It won't help the appliances but I disconnect my long network runs at both ends anytime there is a storm coming.  

 

Good luck with insurance!  I stayed friendly with them and managed to get them to review my home built but high end computers so I got enough compensation to replace them.  I kept them on the phone talking about each component I used until I they connected me with someone who knew what I was talking about.  Hang in there!

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