Hi
I hope this is the right forum to post this in.
A double wide mobile home has been severely hit by lighting. The two halves of the home are permanently joined as manufactured as one home. The 100 amp underground service entrance is installed from the street to a pedestal about 25? from the home. The service disconnect is a 100 amp circuit breaker box with 2 other branch circuit breakers to other loads other then the home, one being for the garage. Apparently the lighting hit the cable TV cable and literally blew up the TV and entertainment equipment in the living room. The bedroom as well as the kitchen TVs ruptured as also. The home owner quickly put out the fire with several extinguishers. The single pole circuit breakers at the pedestal tripped and ruptured leaving large burn marks. The cable TV cable on the back side of the pedestal split open as burning was evident there too. The inside factory wired 100 amp plastic circuit breaker box had burn marks around the grounds near the bottom of the panel (where wires are trained together where they enter the box) and at the ground bar. The ground wires and screws in the ground bar that has the ground wires connected to them are visibly discolored from excessive heat. The screws not used in the bar still looks factory new. Most all of the circuit breakers in the house panel tripped. It is visible that some of the electric cables got very hot from the strike and melted. The house panel is four wire. Both the pedestal and house panel are properly grounded per code.
In the garage there was a miscellaneous metal ?? tubing leaning against the wall touching a NM cable and arbitrarily touching the underground invisible fence wire. It burned the NM cable into two where the tubing touched it and it appears the voltage went into the underground invisible fence cable (from the other end of the tubing). Some of the walls in the house literally blew out from the amount of energy carried through the cable TV cable.
There is a burn mark on the finished floor where the oil burner furnace is placed as if the energy tried to find its way to ground, possible trough the copper fuel line. The refrigerator, well pump, well pump pressure switch, oil burner, dish washer among other things burned out some having visible burn marks.
Two other neighboring homes also suffered burnt out appliances/ well pumps/ TVs but not to the extent that this home suffered. The neighboring homes are approximately 300-350? apart.
I am wondering with the magnitude of this strike, would it be safe and expectable to insulation test (megger) the NM cables throughout the interior of the home to deem them still usable. What other testing should be done? Is it possible that a lot of the NM in the walls was damaged?
I hope this is the right forum to post this in.
A double wide mobile home has been severely hit by lighting. The two halves of the home are permanently joined as manufactured as one home. The 100 amp underground service entrance is installed from the street to a pedestal about 25? from the home. The service disconnect is a 100 amp circuit breaker box with 2 other branch circuit breakers to other loads other then the home, one being for the garage. Apparently the lighting hit the cable TV cable and literally blew up the TV and entertainment equipment in the living room. The bedroom as well as the kitchen TVs ruptured as also. The home owner quickly put out the fire with several extinguishers. The single pole circuit breakers at the pedestal tripped and ruptured leaving large burn marks. The cable TV cable on the back side of the pedestal split open as burning was evident there too. The inside factory wired 100 amp plastic circuit breaker box had burn marks around the grounds near the bottom of the panel (where wires are trained together where they enter the box) and at the ground bar. The ground wires and screws in the ground bar that has the ground wires connected to them are visibly discolored from excessive heat. The screws not used in the bar still looks factory new. Most all of the circuit breakers in the house panel tripped. It is visible that some of the electric cables got very hot from the strike and melted. The house panel is four wire. Both the pedestal and house panel are properly grounded per code.
In the garage there was a miscellaneous metal ?? tubing leaning against the wall touching a NM cable and arbitrarily touching the underground invisible fence wire. It burned the NM cable into two where the tubing touched it and it appears the voltage went into the underground invisible fence cable (from the other end of the tubing). Some of the walls in the house literally blew out from the amount of energy carried through the cable TV cable.
There is a burn mark on the finished floor where the oil burner furnace is placed as if the energy tried to find its way to ground, possible trough the copper fuel line. The refrigerator, well pump, well pump pressure switch, oil burner, dish washer among other things burned out some having visible burn marks.
Two other neighboring homes also suffered burnt out appliances/ well pumps/ TVs but not to the extent that this home suffered. The neighboring homes are approximately 300-350? apart.
I am wondering with the magnitude of this strike, would it be safe and expectable to insulation test (megger) the NM cables throughout the interior of the home to deem them still usable. What other testing should be done? Is it possible that a lot of the NM in the walls was damaged?