Sadly this Friday we had a lightning strike right next to our house, which fried a quarter of the electronics (including my Framework 13 and charger), blew half the lightbulbs, and damaged the breaker. I thought people here would be interested in seeing the aftermath. The charging brick cracked and blew open, and the charger-end USB cable is blackened with a random piece of metal sticking out. The laptop itself is not visibly damaged from the outside, but several surface mount components on the mainboard near the rear left expansion card (the one I was using for charging) are damaged, with one larger one (LT11) being split in half. Unfortunately, the laptop no longer turns on.
Regrettably, it wasn’t plugged into a surge protector, but I honestly doubt it would have made a difference, as a modem, Eero, and old desktop computer in the house were fried right through the new surge protectors they were plugged into. I guess that’s what happens when lightning hits your building’s electric grid! I’m just glad the house didn’t burn down.
I hope I can repair my Framework, but I’m not sure if most of the components are damaged, or only the mainboard. The SSD works at least, and the rest of the laptop appears undamaged, but I have no way of testing any of the other components. What do you think? Should I order a replacement mainboard and see if it works?
Might as well take the chance. Worse case scenario, the mainboard will not work with any components that are not functional. I’d recommend replacing the battery as well, just to be safe, though I imagine that most things that could have gone wrong with the battery would have already, but you never know with lightning.
I’ve heard enough stories about lightning to know two things. First, lightning can make an insolator a conductor. Second, lightning can and will do anything it wants, and no amount of surge protection will truly protect your electronics from a direct precision lightning strike.
That is some serious damage. Lightning is no joke with as far reaching as it can come into anything that will conduct it. Your Mainboard is done for sure. Even the best surge protectors in the world might have mitigated some of it but not all.
The battery should be in good shape as that much current and voltage fried the mainboard probably before it hit the battery. Fortunately the little regulators just pop or burn out in todays electronics because they are so tiny to begin with along with the small traces on the mainboard.
Best news is your Framework Laptop is repairable in individual components! Still have those boxes the power strips came in? I remember for years seeing on APC and one other company would advertise $25,000 $35,000 $50,000 in costs if their power strip failed to protect your stuff. It was all over the packaging. You probably had to register it or send the card in the mail to qualify. I have never known someone to try to get their expensive electronics covered under those programs though.
If it took out enough stuff, the homeowners/renters insurance typically has a deductible for extreme things like this. Unless the loss is closer to $10,000 it is not worth filing a claim as the policy premium might go up.
Thanks for the pictures. Keep us updated with what you find out survived.
I have a lightning strike many years ago.
It came in via the mains and copper telephone cables.
For the phones, all the phone sockets around the house had been welded in. It is like someone had welded the metal pins together, as well as the sockets going mostly black.
This destroyed all network cards I had.
The mains was more of a problem.
I did have surge protectors, but like you is did not save much.
I think the most expensive problem it caused was the wiring in the walls. Most of the earth cable in the walls had broken its insulation and shorted to the live/neutral so all the mains wires in the walls had to be replaced. In many cases, the damage also caused the earth wires to be damaged, causing many of the plug sockets in the house to have no safety earth. Something you might not notice.
I would advise to get an electrician in to double check the wiring in the walls has not been damaged.
One thing that turned out to be lucky was my internet AP and satellite TV boxes were owned by the supplier, so they had to replace them all for free.
As far as reading the specs of the surge protectors, they can protect from lightning strikes that are further away and also from the surges one gets during power cuts/restores. But they cannot protect from very close lightning strikes. I don’t think anything can.
I had my first damaging lightning strike about a month ago. As far as I could tell, it was about 20m from the back wall of my house. About 4 AM. It was like a bomb went off in my room. There was no rumble, just a split second intense explosion and a brief ringing echo. In my sleep-addled state I thought it was the beginning of a military attack.
I have a 1950s era ungrounded electrical system. That has both positives and negatives. Positive: there was no surge on the high power lines. Negative: the EM pulse went through low voltage lines trying to find ground. Like Ethernet. So the only high power device I lost was a GFI. But I lost an old monitor connected via HDMI and almost anything connected via PoE: a MikroTik 10G switch, a Raspberry Pi 4 , a TP-Link ER707-M2 router, an LTE modem and various burnt out Ethernet ports all over the place. The 10G switch and the router were only a few months old and although they were overkill, I liked them. I never even had the chance to see if the LTE modem would failover. The damage was random and unstoppable. My surge protetors and UPS didn’t make any difference because it never went through the high power lines and we never even lost power.
, a TP-Link ER707-M2 router, an LTE modem and various burnt out Ethernet ports all over the place. The 10G switch and the router were only a few months old and although they were overkill, I liked them. I never even had the chance to see if the LTE modem would failover. The damage was random and unstoppable. My surge protetors and UPS didn’t make any difference because it never went through the high power lines and we never even lost power.