Know the Facts of Lightning Safety at Home | Teems Electric

If you’ve lived in northeast Georgia or southeast Tennessee long, you know late July and August tend to bring some nasty pop-up afternoon thunderstorms. While there are plenty of myths about reducing the risks posed by lightning (for instance, lightning can strike long before there’s rain where you are), we want to provide some facts that can help you protect your home when storms come.

  1. Lightning rarely hits houses themselves. While these electrical charges do occasionally target structures, strikes on structures often come in through an indirect route. For instance, wires and pipes provide direct routes lightning can follow to structures and are typically how the bolts get to a home. This is why you should avoid plumbing, including sinks and bathtubs; corded phones and other devices connected to solid communications lines; and electrical equipment during a storm.

  2. Lighting can travel into a house. While your home itself may not be a great conductor and thus be less attractive to lightning, other things around your home may be more likely to be struck. This includes trees and tall antennae. If lightning hits one of those, it can arc into a home, which is also common in structure strikes.

  3. A bolt can come into a house through an open window or door. While it’s a myth that having that exposure can actually attract lightning, it is true a strike can arc into a home through those openings. However, they don’t have to be open for lightning to use them as an entry point and they can explode into dangerous glass and wood fragments if they’re hit, so you should stay away from windows and doors during a storm.

  4. Regular surge protectors don’t stop lightning. Lightning can carry a charge of as many as a billion volts. It takes only a very tiny fraction of that to fry your electronics. While the full voltage may not travel through the wires and into your home, surges from lightning can easily overwhelm standard surge protectors.

We aren’t experts in thunderstorms, but we can help you ensure your home is safely wired to reduce your risk of damage or injury from electrical shock. Call Teems Electric for your home improvement or remodel electrical needs.