Something I’ve wondered for some time now. Why don’t they make lightening rods for private residences? I know they certainly get hit by lightening too.
:):)
I don’t think lightning rods are designed sold specifically for commercial buildings - it’s just that there’s less at stake for a single-family $200,000 home than for a multi-story $5M apartment building or office building, so most homeowners consider the issues and say “not worth the cost/hassle.”
Good question. My guess is that the risk is so low for residences that it wouldn’t be worth the investment. I’d like to have one, though.
(after extensive research)…
Well, whatta ya know, Amazon really does sell everything.
mmm
I see a lot of farm house with lightening rods, not so many in town unless they are on big house with a huge yard. The reason is that farm house often stand alone on top of a hill around an open field, so they are often the tallest structure around.
Larger old houses and historic building in the British Isles and Europe usually had conductors once Prokop Diviš invented the idea — as to whether homes should have them now, depends I imagine on whether builders think it worth protecting bungalows at all.
What would a lightening rod do? Whiten the color scheme?
I was thinking more of decreasing the weight burden on the foundation.
They do. My brother-in-law sells and installs them.
You mean your single family homes don’t have a lightning rod? Huh. My childhood home had one as did the other homes in the same development, though it was a neighborhood strung along a ridgeline. I thought it was pretty much standard. Maybe just in areas with a relatively high number of lightning strikes.
When my spouse decided to play around with amateur radio and we installed a mast for the antennae on the roof we also installed a lightning rod.
After it was vaporized during a storm we replaced it. Got a nice fulgarite out of the strike.
The do make lightning rods for private residences and you’re welcome to install one of your own.
Actually, you have to remember lots of churches and cathedrals were gravely damaged, occasionally to collapse, by lightning right up to the High Middle Ages; and no doubt Roman buildings as well although they were rarely as high as a cathedral. So, lightning rods were a godsend.
My grandparents had lighting rods on their farmhouse.
They didn’t help when lightning struck the telephone pole, came in the house on a poorly grounded line and knocked my grandfather across the kitchen.
Tell me if I am wrong, but all the houses on my block are surrounded by trees that are quite a bit taller. Doesn’t that give protection?
Depends on the geometry. The common model of risk for lighting strike is to imagine a sphere, 300 feet in diameter, rolling across the landscape and making contact with everything it can. As it rolls across the tops of the trees, if it can reach down and touch your house, then there is a risk of a direct strike. This model helps to explain the choice of spacing and height for lightning rods on large buildings
Note also that lightning may strike the top of a nearby tree, but then jump out of the tree before hitting the ground and travel through something else instead (like a nearby house).
Yes, as others have stated, they most certainly do make them for private residences. You can get some rather ornate ones as well.
Also, the rods are much smaller now a days. If you are expecting like five foot ones then you won’t see those so much. Most I have seen are like a foot.
I’ve owned three houses, in New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. They all had them.
Mark Twain discussed the subject in great detail:
http://www.twainquotes.com/Galaxy/187009a.html
Add another to the list of “my childhood home had lightning rods”. In a suburb, not at a particularly high point. Just because.