What should I do after a lightning strike near my house?

Safe Things to Check First

• Smell for burning and look for scorch marks
• Reset tripped breakers once; if they trip again, leave them off
• Test every GFCI and AFCI
• Replace any surge protector that shows a fault light

If none of that changes anything, stop there. Everything past this point involves live conductors and belongs to a licensed electrician.

When to Stop and Call

• Any smell of hot plastic, any discoloration on an outlet, switch or panel cover
• A breaker that trips again immediately after a reset, or feels hot
• Buzzing, crackling or sizzling from the panel, an outlet or a fixture
• The problem is in a home with a Federal Pacific, Zinsco, Challenger or Sylvania panel, or with aluminum branch wiring
• Water has reached any electrical equipment (flooding, roof leak, storm surge)

How We Fix It: Whole-Home Surge Protection

Central Florida is the lightning capital of the United States, and Tampa Bay sits right in the middle of it. Every summer afternoon storm pushes voltage spikes through TECO and Duke Energy lines and into your home, where they quietly degrade the control boards in your AC, refrigerator, washer, TVs and computers until one of them fails. A whole-home surge protective device (SPD) mounted at your electrical panel clamps those spikes before they reach your branch circuits. Lightning Bay Electric, a family owned and operated licensed electrical contractor (EC13013571), installs Type 1 and Type 2 surge protectors from Square D, Eaton, Siemens and Leviton across Tampa Bay, usually in about an hour, with a written price up front. Paired with a panel upgrade, generator or EV charger visit, it adds very little to the job.

Living in the Lightning Capital of the United States

The corridor from Tampa Bay across central Florida to Titusville records more lightning strikes per square mile than anywhere else in the country. Between June and September, the sea breeze collision over the peninsula builds thunderstorms nearly every afternoon, and each one sends surges through the TECO and Duke Energy distribution lines that feed your home. A strike does not have to hit your house to hurt it. A strike a half mile away induces a voltage spike on the lines that arrives at your panel in a fraction of a second, far faster than a breaker can react, and far above what the control boards in your appliances can survive.

Lightning Bay Electric installs whole-home surge protection for homes across Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Manatee counties. We are family owned and operated, licensed by the Florida DBPR under EC13013571, and we have replaced enough lightning-fried air conditioner boards, garage door openers, well pump controls and refrigerator electronics to know that a surge device at the panel is the highest-value small job in electrical work. Most installations take about an hour and cost less than a single AC control board.

How a Whole-Home Surge Protector Works

A surge protective device, or SPD, mounts at or inside your main electrical panel and connects to both hot legs, the neutral and the ground through a dedicated two-pole breaker. Inside are metal oxide varistors that sit idle at normal voltage and become conductive the instant voltage exceeds a threshold, diverting the surge to ground before it continues down your branch circuits. A good Type 2 device clamps a surge in nanoseconds and can absorb tens of thousands of amps over its life. It protects every circuit in the house at once, including the hardwired equipment that can never be put on a power strip: the air conditioner, the water heater, the range, the pool pump, the well pump and the garage door opener.

We install Type 2 devices from Square D, Eaton, Siemens and Leviton, chosen to match your panel brand so the device mounts cleanly and the warranty is honored. For homes that want the strongest protection, a Type 1 device installed on the line side at the meter adds a first layer before the panel. Subpanels for workshops, pool equipment or detached garages can get their own device, and we often install one at the feed to a generator transfer switch so backup power equipment is covered too.

What Surges Actually Destroy in a Florida Home

The damage from surges is usually gradual, which is why homeowners underestimate it. Each spike degrades semiconductors a little. The variable-speed compressor in a modern heat pump, the inverter board on a high-efficiency air handler, the control module in a tankless water heater, the main board on a refrigerator with a touchscreen: all of them take hits storm after storm until one afternoon they simply quit. The repair bill for an AC control board in Tampa Bay runs $600 to $1,500, a variable-speed compressor module far more, and manufacturers are quick to deny warranty claims when the failure looks like surge damage.

Homes on wells are especially exposed, because the submersible pump sits at the bottom of a metal casing in wet earth, which is a near-perfect lightning path, and the pump control box is expensive. Homes with EV chargers, solar inverters and smart home systems have more electronics in harm's way than ever. And the single most valuable piece of protected equipment in most Tampa Bay homes is the air conditioner, which is the one thing you cannot afford to lose in August.

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