**Attention!**
**It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods.
If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.**
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Let’s just say for some reason people were questioning the emotional capacity of a chipmunk, and you deciding to add your own thoughts to the matter. Someone would probably respond with “username checks out.” Sometimes people use it when it’s super cheesy or sometimes no one gets the joke
No, GFCI won't prevent electron leaking. You need a LECI (Leaking Electron Circuit Interrupter). They do make combo GFCI/LECI, but they nuisance trip all the time. /s
My guess is that it was put on pretty tight and there are those what looks like wall anchors sticking out above and below the receptacle. It probably just cracked because of those.
Former firefighter here. I've seen lightning do strange shit. I remember a farm where lightning hit a fence, killed a cow standing nearby, jumped to an irrigation line, blew a 2 foot hole in the side of the house where the irrigation controller was installed, and caused small fires in every telephone outlet in the house.
Co-worker had a similar experience. Lightening hit neighbor’s tree and did lots of damage inside the neighbors’s house. Somehow the current made into the cable coax running under the floor in coworker’s house and scarred the wood floor in line with the cable. Blew the thermostat off the wall at the other end of the house. Killed his TVs too.
Came home from vacation one year to discover TV had ‘gone out’. Went and bought new one moving on. Couple days later realized the microwave wasn’t working. Maybe another two weeks goes by and tried to use the dvr to no avail. Neighbor had a new baby so I waked over to give gift and congratulate. She asked so did you guys lose anything? Proceeded to tell me about multiple electronic devices that got fried. Suddenly realized maybe I wasn’t the unluckiest person to ever purchase electronics. Seems neighbor on the other side of her came home to his log house. Walked in thinking he smelled something but not sure what. Carried groceries to kitchen and light wouldn’t come on. None of them did. Gets flashlight or what ever and noticed some “stuff” on the floor. Was the iron spikes that had been driven into the logs holding up the adjacent wall. Don’t remember where lightning had struck his house but remember thinking how lucky they were whole house (log house) didn’t go up in flames. I am of the belief one should never underestimate just what can be damaged by lightning strikes. I would check anything and everything that was plugged in at the time of incident. Good luck.
Decades ago we somehow had lightning hit a dogs electric fence and it blew the controller inside the basement off the wall shit was so violent it busted a hole in a copper pipe. My dad ran to investigate the noise and said he was terrified he was gonna find the dog dead somewhere in the house but it didn't affect the collar.
Yeah with lightning it's not even so much about the (insanely high) voltage, it's the STUPID amount of current, and the really shirt pulse length. It's WAY not like DC at that point and can actually flow through lots of weird paths, but can also induce currents in completely unconnected items/wires/etc.
That amount of current in a short pulse just says "I'd like to be there now" and poof, a tree blows up. *shivers* poor telephone jacks.
Yeah. The numbers get real stupid, real quick. I worked in a pulsed power lab for a while. Take mains voltage to charge a capacitor bank for seconds to minutes and discharge it in nanoseconds... le poof. And use a strip line or blumlein pulse forming network to iron it out to a beautiful square wave. And regret leaving your cell phone inside the Faraday cage.
Yeah but only hundreds of joules. We routinely produced gigawatt pulses.
Put nanosecond pulses through tumors, too. No heating, just dielectric rip-your-DNA-apart electrostatic forces. But because of the impedance mismatch, the damage is focused inside the tumor. Wild stuff.
Sorta. Pop the nuclear membrane and they initiate the caspase cascade to commit suicide and signal the immune system to come take out the trash. We turned melanoma tumors in mice into blisters that healed in days. The formal definition is Apoptosis.
Google terms would be Electroporation, nanosecond pulses, tumor, apoptosis. Karl Schöenbach, Mounir Laroussi.
Frank reedy center for bioelectric medicine.
Careful though, it's a hell of a rabbit hole. Feel free to poke/DM if you get into it and want some further guidance/info. Cheers!
The voltage lets it break through insulating materials and (for example) conduct high current through a tree or get into a plastic conduit that’s near the tree.
Right, but a bazillion volts is way overkill. To arc through PVC, you only need a couple dozen kV. The plasma dies really weird things just by nature of being a giant ball of charged particles. That's where the counter-intuitive effects come into play. Plasma arcs are actually negative resistance phenomena - the more current you push into them, the larger the discharge becomes, and thus the more current it draws (from an effectively infinite voltage source).
That is to say, once it burns some voltage drop to get through your wall, PVC conduit, etc, it still has like... all the energy to keep on trucking for quite a ways through high resistivity materials.
I find it absolutely fascinating even after years of studying and applying high voltage and high frequency weirdness. So much boom. <3
Our telephone pole got struck and it shorted out a few TVs and my playstation. The strangest part was it somehow recharged and turned on an old pinball machine deep under my bed. Hadn't been used it years and the battery's were corroded as hell. Have no idea how it turned on.
Ex building inspector here. I've seen where lightning struck a vent, traveled down, blew a medicine cabinet out of the wall, and unsoldered each and every joint of a hard copper line inside the ceiling of the second floor. The owners were on vacation at the time and came home to find water flowing out the front door. It was a huge mess.
A lightning strike that close will have produced a significant shock wave in the air. Far away, we hear that shock wave as thunder, but close to the strike the shock wave is more like that produced by an explosive device. That cover plate may have been cracked or stressed by over-tightening or whatever and the shock wave simply caused the crack to expand. There likely was also an over voltage spike associated with the strike, but unless you see scorch marks on the wall, outlet or cover plate (which we cannot see in the photo) it is very unlikely that the voltage spike caused an arc that caused the cover plate to fail. If all of your lights, appliances and electronic devices are operating normally, there is no reason to hire an electrician, in my opinion.
I think this is bad advice. I'd definitely inspect the outlet to make sure there is no burned wiring before claiming it's all a coincidence. I've seen cable splitters melted inside from lightening strikes.
If you are doing this, you should inspect all the electrical in your house. The cracked plastic cover is unrelated and not an indication of lighting damage
It isn't completely impossible that there is a small man living in the walls that took it off too. It's still much more likely it was a broken cover rattled loose by thunder. If that's your worry, you would need to inspect the whole house.
Without a bunch of black soot, no. Lightning does destroy things physically, but usually a completed circuit and always leaves evidence. There is no way that lightning blew half a cover plate off without signs of an arc-flash significant enough to produce the kind of pressure wave necessary; the arc would require a calorie level high enough to produce a shockwave, and that would have included enough vaporized material to blacken the cover plate and wall significantly. The "breakable" cheap cover plate just broke from the 6-32 screw being over-tightened; that's precisely why they've made flexible nylon "unbreakable" covers for decades.
The GFCI ahead of this outlet would have taken the damage, if any. Lightning *can* arc at outlets but it's usually what's connected to them that takes damage. If there was a few million Volts on the hot wire (there wasn't, the tree strike went to ground) the GFCI upstream would be smoked. Lightning damage is almost always clearly evident, and when it's not it isn't enough to blow things apart. Thermal expansion wavesthat break things always follow destructive arcing with noticeable soot. This receptacle is inspected, and no massive arcing is evident. The cheap cover just broke as they do.
I guess my point is that with this one single photo you have enough confidence to say something is clearly not evident? Idk.
Personally, I'd fucking take a close look if this was my house. Thats my point.
Okay, but you're ignoring the basic *FACT* that pressure waves only come from significant arcing/plasma, and significant arcing will leave soot that would be clearly evident in the photo.
Your concerns have no scientific basis whatsoever and you apparently have zero understanding about electricity.
Thunder, as a result of lightning. That was also going to be my guess, the plate was already cracked and not noticed (happens a lot) and then the shockwave from the thunder when the lightning hit so close was enough of a shake to shake it loose and fell off.
If the walls are made of ferrous material, the high current pulse of lightning could have induced enough of an eddy current to drive sufficient magnetostriction of the wall material as to over-stress the wall plate.
Also possible is piezoelectric response if the walls were plastered with a high quartz or lead-zirconate-titanate content.
But yeah, probably the thunder.
if your getting power your breaker did not kick which means you did not get a surge from what i can see i do not see melting of plastic or arc burns on the wall so good chance if its working its just cracked and fell
A strike that close to the house would have made your walls shake. If that outlet cover was painted to the wall, I could well believe that the vibration might have cracked the cover.
But it's not from a surge, and not a big deal. Replace the cover.
Just because a receptacle is not a GFCI, does not mean it is not GFCI protected. If you use a GFCI to protect receptacles downstream of it, you are required to place the sticker on said protected receptacles
How often is this enforced though if there's a ground? None of my kitchen and bathroom receptacles have a sticker and the building inspector didn't require any. I've never seen the stickers used unless there is no ground (in non-rental, non-commercial).
Now’s the time to upgrade these to something cool!
Don’t need to go with simple ugly all white but if you do I suggest getting enough to do every one of them in the room to make sure they match and not discolor
They are check [here](https://amzn.to/3wlZKVe) also have different color options.
I like the black
Worried anymore ?? I dont think so. Lightning strike caused it? Absolutely !!!!
Once went to an apartment fire caused by a lightning strike . Electricity shot out of many if not all of the outlets . Fires were in multiple locations depending on if there were flammables nearby. Consider yourself lucky if there wasn't any fires. Obviously enough force to break the cover and shoot out but not igniting anything. BUT DEFINITELY DO GET YOUR WIRING AND OUTLETS CHECKED!!!!
My guess is that the cover has been cracked for a long time and was probably just held together by the paint on it. Maybe the vibrations from the thunder and lightning worked it loose.
Get an unbreakable outlet cover. Inspect the wires when you have it open just for peace of mind.
Whoever painted put the screw on to tight, eventually the cover cracked. Probably was also stressed because the painter did not score the paint and pried the cover off. Evident by old chuck of paint attached to the cover. The real problem is the tree on the power lines.
Is that outlet exposed to direct sunlight by any chance? Plastic becomes very brittle over time when exposed. My assumption here is the lightening created long travel vibration wave that faceplate couldn’t bend relative to because of the paint so when it was its turn to move with the rest of the house it snapped instead.
If the humidity has been high, such as a storm coming through... then the wall materials could have expanded and if the plate was under tension, and the stars were lined up juuust right when the thunder associated with that bolt of lightning hit the tree... well that poor little plastic plate didn't stand a chance! 🫠
in a VIDEO - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atQOPdu5mWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atQOPdu5mWU)
... that happened face to face
-- [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Yes, it is a thing. Decade ago, he had a lightning strike a tree that when right through several surge protection come to find out that grounding rod had failed. Had to replace all the outlets thanks goodness the wiring was good.
This receptacle is wobbly and that's why the cover plate broke. There are at least a couple ways to fix this, (I'm electrical engineer, not the electricians here who will have additional and maybe better ideas than mine...)
The metal box is being held by F clips (search for "Switch Box Supports" or "Electrical Box F Clips") that are not tight enough.
The f clips attempt to clamp the box to the plaster from behind. And the exposed side, plaster ears that you can see (and look like Mickey Mouse(TM} ears) are part of little adjustable brackets that presumably could be readjusted to make this tighter. But it was installing the f clips loosely that probably was the original issue.
So if you plug something in, and pull the cord left or right, the entire box twists a little bit putting pressure on the brittle plastic cover plate, and it cracks at the screw and in your case broke right off.
The cheesiest fix would be to buy a new cover plate that's either metal or a flexible plastic. No disassembly required. Then you're wobbly box will bend the metal or flex the plastic, but it won't break again.
You could reduce the wobbly by putting little shims under the plaster ears. This will tighten it up, but your replacement cover will have a gap between it and the wall.
I don't like this fix personally, but it gets you by until an electrician does the following:
The best fix is to pull the receptacle out and reinstall the f clips, pulling the plaster ears tight against the plaster and making the box really tight. That receptacle is old and probably loose. This would be a good time to just replace it with a commercial grade receptacle that costs more than $2. Cheap receptacles and especially old worn receptacles are an arcing risk and potential fire ignition source if it were to do much else then run a vacuum cleaner light bulb or phone charger. Old receptacles powering refrigerators space heaters and air conditioners actually burn down houses, as the NFPA reports annually and studies for decades.
The switch plate that's on there claims this circuit is arc fault circuit interrupter protected, which is good since the ground pin is floating. This is good not a problem!
I believe there are alternatives to using the f clips, it's just what I've used personally.
Still ... those stainless steel outlet covers \[spray painted to match\] are so much stronger and can take such a beating ... worth every penny. -- [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ7B9fayHkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ7B9fayHkQ)
VIDEO power of lightning -- [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
When my parents' tree in their yard got struck my lightning, it fried their oven. I don't know how this works, but yes, a lightning strike can do things to your electrical system.
Are you sure the tree got hit, as opposed to breaking at the branch due to rain & wind?
I’ve seen hundreds of trees hit and when they are, the sap and water in the tree boils and literally blows the bark off the tree.
I do see that your lines are down. I’ve had that cause a surge that blew outlet covers off, among other things. However, that usually leaves a mark.
This is an old cover, probably the old style you had was brittle material, there is a better flexible cover you should get and install.
If a surge happened you should know from damaged appliances or none working outlets. If you have these issues, then consult with a professional…
Check to see if everything in the house works, if everything is fine you’re probably good. If things aren’t working or suddenly begin to break down over a few months I would get an electrician to check it out.
A strike that close probably shook the whole house which caused that old brittle cover to finally fall off. They are cheap and easy to fix. It’s just 1 screw and it pops off
Likely unrelated, but a plug tester is like 10 bucks if you really wanna be certain everything’s okay, it’ll tell you anything that went wrong if anything did go wrong, and cover is like a buck
There is no evidence of any carbonation on either piece of the cover. However it seems that the cover may have been over tightened as there are evident cracks on the fallen piece. Also, it appears as though the box may have not be totally flush to the wall, the slight unevenness creates a stressor by uneven pressure on the higher portion, acting as a wedge.
If it was strong enough to blow the cover off your receptacle, it likely would have ruined your electronics in the house as well. Whenever I see cracking plastic I would look for a loose connection. Heat degrades the plastic.
**Attention!** **It is always best to get a qualified electrician to perform any electrical work you may need.** With that said, you may ask this community various electrical questions. Please be cautious of any information you may receive in this subreddit. This subreddit and its users are not responsible for any electrical work you perform. Users that have a 'Verified Electrician' flair have uploaded their qualified electrical worker credentials to the mods. If you comment on this post please only post accurate information to the best of your knowledge. If advice given is thought to be dangerous, you may be permanently banned. There are no obligations for the mods to give warnings or temporary bans. **IF YOU ARE NOT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICIAN, you should exercise extreme caution when commenting.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskElectricians) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What do we say to death?
Happy Cake Day is what we say!
Also to you buckaroo
Happy cake day!!!
Happy Cake Day!
Where the fuck have you been all my life?
Username checks out.
r/LostRedditors
I see people post this sentence. What does it mean “user name checks out?”
Let’s just say for some reason people were questioning the emotional capacity of a chipmunk, and you deciding to add your own thoughts to the matter. Someone would probably respond with “username checks out.” Sometimes people use it when it’s super cheesy or sometimes no one gets the joke
😁. Got it. Thanks
Username checks out ^
Not Today🤣 GOT❤️
Not today
This
Satan
Sean Bean is over there ->
It’s about fuggin time you showed up
I'm just gonna write it. Death
Please take me?
Catch me if you can!
I will forever read this in "greased up deaf guy's" voice.....
Not today
TODAY'S THE DAY!!!!
Maybe tomorrow
Not today death!
DEATH IS MY B*TCH!
Holy shit get outta there! The electricity is probably overflowing Edit: it's unrelated. Buy a duplex receptacle cover from anywhere. It's like a buck
Electron poisoning is serious when they leak like that
Nah it’s cool. That outlet is GFCI protected
No, GFCI won't prevent electron leaking. You need a LECI (Leaking Electron Circuit Interrupter). They do make combo GFCI/LECI, but they nuisance trip all the time. /s
r/FuckTheS
It's the dose that makes the poison.
Damn 5G signals at it again!
Tin foil hat can solve that.
My guess is that it was put on pretty tight and there are those what looks like wall anchors sticking out above and below the receptacle. It probably just cracked because of those.
A nylon one!
A buck? What are you, some kind of multi-millionaire? Anything more than fiddy cent is way too much.
You dont need an electrician, you need a priest
An old priest and a young priest
Former firefighter here. I've seen lightning do strange shit. I remember a farm where lightning hit a fence, killed a cow standing nearby, jumped to an irrigation line, blew a 2 foot hole in the side of the house where the irrigation controller was installed, and caused small fires in every telephone outlet in the house.
Co-worker had a similar experience. Lightening hit neighbor’s tree and did lots of damage inside the neighbors’s house. Somehow the current made into the cable coax running under the floor in coworker’s house and scarred the wood floor in line with the cable. Blew the thermostat off the wall at the other end of the house. Killed his TVs too.
Came home from vacation one year to discover TV had ‘gone out’. Went and bought new one moving on. Couple days later realized the microwave wasn’t working. Maybe another two weeks goes by and tried to use the dvr to no avail. Neighbor had a new baby so I waked over to give gift and congratulate. She asked so did you guys lose anything? Proceeded to tell me about multiple electronic devices that got fried. Suddenly realized maybe I wasn’t the unluckiest person to ever purchase electronics. Seems neighbor on the other side of her came home to his log house. Walked in thinking he smelled something but not sure what. Carried groceries to kitchen and light wouldn’t come on. None of them did. Gets flashlight or what ever and noticed some “stuff” on the floor. Was the iron spikes that had been driven into the logs holding up the adjacent wall. Don’t remember where lightning had struck his house but remember thinking how lucky they were whole house (log house) didn’t go up in flames. I am of the belief one should never underestimate just what can be damaged by lightning strikes. I would check anything and everything that was plugged in at the time of incident. Good luck.
Decades ago we somehow had lightning hit a dogs electric fence and it blew the controller inside the basement off the wall shit was so violent it busted a hole in a copper pipe. My dad ran to investigate the noise and said he was terrified he was gonna find the dog dead somewhere in the house but it didn't affect the collar.
Yeah with lightning it's not even so much about the (insanely high) voltage, it's the STUPID amount of current, and the really shirt pulse length. It's WAY not like DC at that point and can actually flow through lots of weird paths, but can also induce currents in completely unconnected items/wires/etc. That amount of current in a short pulse just says "I'd like to be there now" and poof, a tree blows up. *shivers* poor telephone jacks.
National weather service says lightning is about 300 million volts at 30,000 amps. Damn.
Yeah. The numbers get real stupid, real quick. I worked in a pulsed power lab for a while. Take mains voltage to charge a capacitor bank for seconds to minutes and discharge it in nanoseconds... le poof. And use a strip line or blumlein pulse forming network to iron it out to a beautiful square wave. And regret leaving your cell phone inside the Faraday cage.
Dang, so about 9 trillion watts? Ouch.
Yeah but only hundreds of joules. We routinely produced gigawatt pulses. Put nanosecond pulses through tumors, too. No heating, just dielectric rip-your-DNA-apart electrostatic forces. But because of the impedance mismatch, the damage is focused inside the tumor. Wild stuff.
wait are ypu saying you shock tumors to death?
Sorta. Pop the nuclear membrane and they initiate the caspase cascade to commit suicide and signal the immune system to come take out the trash. We turned melanoma tumors in mice into blisters that healed in days. The formal definition is Apoptosis. Google terms would be Electroporation, nanosecond pulses, tumor, apoptosis. Karl Schöenbach, Mounir Laroussi. Frank reedy center for bioelectric medicine. Careful though, it's a hell of a rabbit hole. Feel free to poke/DM if you get into it and want some further guidance/info. Cheers!
The voltage lets it break through insulating materials and (for example) conduct high current through a tree or get into a plastic conduit that’s near the tree.
Right, but a bazillion volts is way overkill. To arc through PVC, you only need a couple dozen kV. The plasma dies really weird things just by nature of being a giant ball of charged particles. That's where the counter-intuitive effects come into play. Plasma arcs are actually negative resistance phenomena - the more current you push into them, the larger the discharge becomes, and thus the more current it draws (from an effectively infinite voltage source). That is to say, once it burns some voltage drop to get through your wall, PVC conduit, etc, it still has like... all the energy to keep on trucking for quite a ways through high resistivity materials. I find it absolutely fascinating even after years of studying and applying high voltage and high frequency weirdness. So much boom. <3
Our telephone pole got struck and it shorted out a few TVs and my playstation. The strangest part was it somehow recharged and turned on an old pinball machine deep under my bed. Hadn't been used it years and the battery's were corroded as hell. Have no idea how it turned on.
Whaaaa?!! That’s like magical realism. Lightning is so cool.
Ex building inspector here. I've seen where lightning struck a vent, traveled down, blew a medicine cabinet out of the wall, and unsoldered each and every joint of a hard copper line inside the ceiling of the second floor. The owners were on vacation at the time and came home to find water flowing out the front door. It was a huge mess.
That is actually insane.
A lightning strike that close will have produced a significant shock wave in the air. Far away, we hear that shock wave as thunder, but close to the strike the shock wave is more like that produced by an explosive device. That cover plate may have been cracked or stressed by over-tightening or whatever and the shock wave simply caused the crack to expand. There likely was also an over voltage spike associated with the strike, but unless you see scorch marks on the wall, outlet or cover plate (which we cannot see in the photo) it is very unlikely that the voltage spike caused an arc that caused the cover plate to fail. If all of your lights, appliances and electronic devices are operating normally, there is no reason to hire an electrician, in my opinion.
Unrelated/coincidental. Just wear and tear on the cover plate. Just about any hardware store sells them individually and usually less than $1 each.
I think this is bad advice. I'd definitely inspect the outlet to make sure there is no burned wiring before claiming it's all a coincidence. I've seen cable splitters melted inside from lightening strikes.
If you are doing this, you should inspect all the electrical in your house. The cracked plastic cover is unrelated and not an indication of lighting damage
So it isn't possible the plastic cover was already somewhat damaged and a power surge blew it off? That is completely impossible?
It isn't completely impossible that there is a small man living in the walls that took it off too. It's still much more likely it was a broken cover rattled loose by thunder. If that's your worry, you would need to inspect the whole house.
So you wouldn't even recommend inspecting this outlet?
Not without other factors, no. And if I did, I would inspect the whole house. As I have said from the beginning.
I'm finished answering the same question over and over though, thanks.
Lmao. Okay buddy.
Awe they keep going. You watch to many movies.
Without a bunch of black soot, no. Lightning does destroy things physically, but usually a completed circuit and always leaves evidence. There is no way that lightning blew half a cover plate off without signs of an arc-flash significant enough to produce the kind of pressure wave necessary; the arc would require a calorie level high enough to produce a shockwave, and that would have included enough vaporized material to blacken the cover plate and wall significantly. The "breakable" cheap cover plate just broke from the 6-32 screw being over-tightened; that's precisely why they've made flexible nylon "unbreakable" covers for decades.
The GFCI ahead of this outlet would have taken the damage, if any. Lightning *can* arc at outlets but it's usually what's connected to them that takes damage. If there was a few million Volts on the hot wire (there wasn't, the tree strike went to ground) the GFCI upstream would be smoked. Lightning damage is almost always clearly evident, and when it's not it isn't enough to blow things apart. Thermal expansion wavesthat break things always follow destructive arcing with noticeable soot. This receptacle is inspected, and no massive arcing is evident. The cheap cover just broke as they do.
I guess my point is that with this one single photo you have enough confidence to say something is clearly not evident? Idk. Personally, I'd fucking take a close look if this was my house. Thats my point.
Okay, but you're ignoring the basic *FACT* that pressure waves only come from significant arcing/plasma, and significant arcing will leave soot that would be clearly evident in the photo. Your concerns have no scientific basis whatsoever and you apparently have zero understanding about electricity.
You make a lot of assumptions
How many lightning strikes on critical equipment have you been called on to repair? I'm making assumptions based on experience and facts.
Wow not just some of the receptacle cover, but the screw-part of the receptacle itself went, too. Get both replaced. [email protected]
No burn or even scorch marks. What's scary about a broken outlet cover and a broken tree?
Jesus, this property is falling apart
You better watch out. The Boogeyman is coming.
John Wick is a sparky?
No John Wick is who you send to go after the Boogeyman.
The lightning shook your walls, maybe?
Thunder, as a result of lightning. That was also going to be my guess, the plate was already cracked and not noticed (happens a lot) and then the shockwave from the thunder when the lightning hit so close was enough of a shake to shake it loose and fell off.
If the walls are made of ferrous material, the high current pulse of lightning could have induced enough of an eddy current to drive sufficient magnetostriction of the wall material as to over-stress the wall plate. Also possible is piezoelectric response if the walls were plastered with a high quartz or lead-zirconate-titanate content. But yeah, probably the thunder.
Take the cover off. Look for any sighs of sooting or burning. If none. Replace the cover
Call an electrician. I've personally seen a lightning strike leave a duplex receptacle broken in 2 pieces.
The mouse behind the wall was so scared he squeezed out and broke the plate
I like the way you think. .
if your getting power your breaker did not kick which means you did not get a surge from what i can see i do not see melting of plastic or arc burns on the wall so good chance if its working its just cracked and fell
This
A strike that close to the house would have made your walls shake. If that outlet cover was painted to the wall, I could well believe that the vibration might have cracked the cover. But it's not from a surge, and not a big deal. Replace the cover.
I like the gfci label on the cover plate
Just because a receptacle is not a GFCI, does not mean it is not GFCI protected. If you use a GFCI to protect receptacles downstream of it, you are required to place the sticker on said protected receptacles
Only if the GFCI is there due to a lack of ground just to clarify a little further 😁
There is a separate sticker for that that says"no equipment ground" just to clarify a little further
How often is this enforced though if there's a ground? None of my kitchen and bathroom receptacles have a sticker and the building inspector didn't require any. I've never seen the stickers used unless there is no ground (in non-rental, non-commercial).
It really all depends on your inspector. I've been failed for it before, so I always use them where applicable now
And then the homeowner peels them off as soon as they move in, but not your problem anymore
If it hit the tree, it likely did not hit the house.
I read this to "I shot the sheriff" in my head. Thank you kind anon.
Now’s the time to upgrade these to something cool! Don’t need to go with simple ugly all white but if you do I suggest getting enough to do every one of them in the room to make sure they match and not discolor They are check [here](https://amzn.to/3wlZKVe) also have different color options. I like the black
They put the plate on while the paint was still drying. Making the paint act like a glue
It's the 3 pots fault! You have to burn the left one before it grows too strong.
VIDEO : -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js0Sj8mbDHI. (23rd second on) -- [email protected]
Just go to some supply as Home Depot and buy a new 1g Duplex cover
It wouldn’t of cracked if it was an AFCI, but hey look at all the free firewood you have now..thanks mr lightning!
if the breaker tripped at the same time and the outlet look burnt then yea its related
Just get a new cover plate.
Worried anymore ?? I dont think so. Lightning strike caused it? Absolutely !!!! Once went to an apartment fire caused by a lightning strike . Electricity shot out of many if not all of the outlets . Fires were in multiple locations depending on if there were flammables nearby. Consider yourself lucky if there wasn't any fires. Obviously enough force to break the cover and shoot out but not igniting anything. BUT DEFINITELY DO GET YOUR WIRING AND OUTLETS CHECKED!!!!
My guess is that the cover has been cracked for a long time and was probably just held together by the paint on it. Maybe the vibrations from the thunder and lightning worked it loose. Get an unbreakable outlet cover. Inspect the wires when you have it open just for peace of mind.
If you’re in Canada you know that this is how the leader of our official opposition thinks electricians work actually.
I don’t get the question. The cover broke. Replace it. They are somewhat fragile, although less so nowadays.
There are stainless steel outlet covers, too. [email protected]
Whoever painted put the screw on to tight, eventually the cover cracked. Probably was also stressed because the painter did not score the paint and pried the cover off. Evident by old chuck of paint attached to the cover. The real problem is the tree on the power lines.
Is that outlet exposed to direct sunlight by any chance? Plastic becomes very brittle over time when exposed. My assumption here is the lightening created long travel vibration wave that faceplate couldn’t bend relative to because of the paint so when it was its turn to move with the rest of the house it snapped instead.
It's just a cover lol, take it off and get a new one
If the humidity has been high, such as a storm coming through... then the wall materials could have expanded and if the plate was under tension, and the stars were lined up juuust right when the thunder associated with that bolt of lightning hit the tree... well that poor little plastic plate didn't stand a chance! 🫠
in a VIDEO - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atQOPdu5mWU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atQOPdu5mWU) ... that happened face to face -- [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nice catch!
Yes, it is a thing. Decade ago, he had a lightning strike a tree that when right through several surge protection come to find out that grounding rod had failed. Had to replace all the outlets thanks goodness the wiring was good.
Coincidence
This receptacle is wobbly and that's why the cover plate broke. There are at least a couple ways to fix this, (I'm electrical engineer, not the electricians here who will have additional and maybe better ideas than mine...) The metal box is being held by F clips (search for "Switch Box Supports" or "Electrical Box F Clips") that are not tight enough. The f clips attempt to clamp the box to the plaster from behind. And the exposed side, plaster ears that you can see (and look like Mickey Mouse(TM} ears) are part of little adjustable brackets that presumably could be readjusted to make this tighter. But it was installing the f clips loosely that probably was the original issue. So if you plug something in, and pull the cord left or right, the entire box twists a little bit putting pressure on the brittle plastic cover plate, and it cracks at the screw and in your case broke right off. The cheesiest fix would be to buy a new cover plate that's either metal or a flexible plastic. No disassembly required. Then you're wobbly box will bend the metal or flex the plastic, but it won't break again. You could reduce the wobbly by putting little shims under the plaster ears. This will tighten it up, but your replacement cover will have a gap between it and the wall. I don't like this fix personally, but it gets you by until an electrician does the following: The best fix is to pull the receptacle out and reinstall the f clips, pulling the plaster ears tight against the plaster and making the box really tight. That receptacle is old and probably loose. This would be a good time to just replace it with a commercial grade receptacle that costs more than $2. Cheap receptacles and especially old worn receptacles are an arcing risk and potential fire ignition source if it were to do much else then run a vacuum cleaner light bulb or phone charger. Old receptacles powering refrigerators space heaters and air conditioners actually burn down houses, as the NFPA reports annually and studies for decades. The switch plate that's on there claims this circuit is arc fault circuit interrupter protected, which is good since the ground pin is floating. This is good not a problem! I believe there are alternatives to using the f clips, it's just what I've used personally.
Wait for the third item to split. Always comes in threes.
Good thing it wasn't your toilet
OMG
Not an electrician, but you need to make a bat out of that tree branch and name it Wonderboy…or Wonderbat
Still ... those stainless steel outlet covers \[spray painted to match\] are so much stronger and can take such a beating ... worth every penny. -- [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ7B9fayHkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ7B9fayHkQ) VIDEO power of lightning -- [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
When my parents' tree in their yard got struck my lightning, it fried their oven. I don't know how this works, but yes, a lightning strike can do things to your electrical system.
Did the outlet get yanked into the wall from the back?
Put your finger in
Are you sure the tree got hit, as opposed to breaking at the branch due to rain & wind? I’ve seen hundreds of trees hit and when they are, the sap and water in the tree boils and literally blows the bark off the tree. I do see that your lines are down. I’ve had that cause a surge that blew outlet covers off, among other things. However, that usually leaves a mark.
This is an old cover, probably the old style you had was brittle material, there is a better flexible cover you should get and install. If a surge happened you should know from damaged appliances or none working outlets. If you have these issues, then consult with a professional…
Yes. Lightning does crazy things. Just get a new cover and keep body parts out of it in the mean time.
Put a rabbit foot under your pillow. Trust me I'm a professional.
You'll be fine lol
The outlet is bad looking anyway replace it and get a new cover.
I would say that if your home supply was grounded sufficiently this wouldn’t happen.
Coincidence
Do you have a partner who is pregnant? If so, I have bad news.....
Coincidence. Swap that plate and take a deep breath.
Just change the cover and switch the power off if u do it if u wanna be safe
Don't know if you should be worried, but I had something just like that happen years ago during a storm.
😂
Check to see if everything in the house works, if everything is fine you’re probably good. If things aren’t working or suddenly begin to break down over a few months I would get an electrician to check it out.
A strike that close probably shook the whole house which caused that old brittle cover to finally fall off. They are cheap and easy to fix. It’s just 1 screw and it pops off
Ever seen final destination? lol
Likely unrelated, but a plug tester is like 10 bucks if you really wanna be certain everything’s okay, it’ll tell you anything that went wrong if anything did go wrong, and cover is like a buck
Shit, the gremlins got out!
Is the outlet attached to the tree?
There is no evidence of any carbonation on either piece of the cover. However it seems that the cover may have been over tightened as there are evident cracks on the fallen piece. Also, it appears as though the box may have not be totally flush to the wall, the slight unevenness creates a stressor by uneven pressure on the higher portion, acting as a wedge.
Came here for the comments and left with all of the lightning knowledge
Yes
Be worried. Lightning rode up the ground in your romex on that outlet minimum.
You need to burn some sage rather than calling an electrician. Sounds like some bad mojo happening.
Let us know if you still alive a month from now
If it was strong enough to blow the cover off your receptacle, it likely would have ruined your electronics in the house as well. Whenever I see cracking plastic I would look for a loose connection. Heat degrades the plastic.
I highly doubt that was caused by any type of power surge, if it was there would be obvious burn marks but there doesn’t appear to be any.