Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Your on a metal tower with legs going into ground (beautiful mill & setting by the way) ... I'd say you have 4 ground rods already (tower legs).

There's no doubt, that when towers are erected using the "packed" earth/rock/gravel method, the electrical connection should be very good. I wondered if surrounding the feet with concrete would be a "bad" connection, kind of big resistors. Years ago, I worked with a prof. at U of MN who made lightning! They would store up electricity in many, many used transformers from the power company and when they became fully charged, they would ZAP sections of aircraft and anything else that needed research. He said the first time they tried it was on a Sunday morning and when they set it off, 2/3 of North Minneapolis went dark for about four hours! He also said that the importance of it all is that the electricity is dissipated BEFORE the bolt blows something up. By the way, after years of doing really dangerous stuff with lightning, a skiing accident put the prof. down...(Now that I'm talking about all of this, I think my neighbors are going to be seeing me driving a ground rod.)

I guess my feeling is what's it going to hurt to have a ground rod. If I have had lighting hit any of my windmills over the years it didn't cause any damage. I did have a walnut tree hit with lighting years ago and it killed the tree and the three cows that were standing under the tree. A 60 ft windmill was only about 500 feet from the tree.

Can someone explain what has changed from the days that most houses had lighting rods and now they don't. I know you are supposed to have an 8 ft ground rod connected to the ground wire of your house. Did that do away with the need for lighting rods on top of houses? Was a computer tech from the 70's through the 90's. In some areas Lighting would really cause grief.

There was a thread on the previous forum on mills that had been struck. I don't recall any being significantly damaged.

Most towers are in direct contact with the ground.

I have only seen one that was struck. It left deep grooves similarities a grinder would do going down the leg and braces. I kept a portion of one brace as a souvenir

I think Chuck from the Windmill Farm one time posted a struck mill picture. I'm surprised more don't suffer damage, but I've never seen one damaged. They are firmly grounded for a good connection.

Don't know about lighting striking windmills, but where I lived before in Smith Co Texas. Lighting struck a neighbors deep wheel pump house. It welded things together down in the well and they couldn't pull the pump so had to drill a complete new well. Also over there two trees were struck in different years about 100ft from my metal towered Monitor. It blew one tree up so bad I found big log pieces in my yard about 300ft from the tree. As far as I know it was never hit.

. Lightening track left on girt