Have been on a call from hades lately. Florida is known as the lightning capitol of the country for a good reason. It took out all credit card functions, along with a lot of the electronics, and there are a lot at newer washes. The techs at Unitec have been great in helping me get the Wash Select 2 going, but I have a really odd thing going on in the self serve bays. This is Magic Wand equipment. The bays are connected directly to the control panel for them. At the panel the neutral and ground are wired to each other. This is common on most systems. At the meter boxes however if you read with a voltmeter between ground and common, I get from 16 to 24 vac. You can get a nice tingle at the bay if the floor is wet. At first I thought to just connect the ground and common at the bay. Wrong move. It fried the timer. How can one cable be the same at one end, yet have a 24 vac difference at the other end. Except for the occasional tingle, the bays work fine. Any thoughts?
lightning strikes and bad vibes
- Thread starter mac
- Start date
Andyjmyr
Attendant
Mac,
I feel your pain........
Two weeks ago we took a direct hit. I even caught the bolt on camera. I'll have to show you sometime. Took out 5 of our 16 cameras, DVR, cables to the DVR, Coin acceptor board in WSII, coin acceptor in the WSII, and several other electronic devices.
I'm so glad we prepared all of our expensive equipment in our office, just for the occasion. We bought an UPS. The best you can buy. We have our computers, coin counter, currency counter, TV, Muzak, and other electronics.
Lightning sucks. Amazing to look at though.
-Andy
I feel your pain........
Two weeks ago we took a direct hit. I even caught the bolt on camera. I'll have to show you sometime. Took out 5 of our 16 cameras, DVR, cables to the DVR, Coin acceptor board in WSII, coin acceptor in the WSII, and several other electronic devices.
I'm so glad we prepared all of our expensive equipment in our office, just for the occasion. We bought an UPS. The best you can buy. We have our computers, coin counter, currency counter, TV, Muzak, and other electronics.
Lightning sucks. Amazing to look at though.
-Andy
I wouldn't be surprised if the meter box is not really grounded. Then any short in the 24 hot or timed hot could energize the meter box frame and not blow any fuses. If there are multiple connections for the 24 hot or timed hot in the meter box, disconnet them and then reconnect one at a time until the meter box gives you a shock (voltmeter shows voltage on the frame). I can recall several times when I have gotten shocked from a meter box, yet the bay will still operate normally.
I recently had a customer that got to his wash the morning after a bad lightning storm and found 3 of 4 vacs running. He turned breakers off and called me. I got there the next day and turned on the breakers and the vacs started running again. The lightning had fried the timers (Ginsans dated 1992) and caused them to stay on without tripping the breakers. We estimated the vacs ran about 8 hrs straight. Still can't believe 3 of 4 did exactly the same thing (the 4th vac also had a ginsan timer dated 1992--I had to look!). Good luck---lightning damage is the worst troubleshooting issues I have dealt with in 13 years of tech support.
I recently had a customer that got to his wash the morning after a bad lightning storm and found 3 of 4 vacs running. He turned breakers off and called me. I got there the next day and turned on the breakers and the vacs started running again. The lightning had fried the timers (Ginsans dated 1992) and caused them to stay on without tripping the breakers. We estimated the vacs ran about 8 hrs straight. Still can't believe 3 of 4 did exactly the same thing (the 4th vac also had a ginsan timer dated 1992--I had to look!). Good luck---lightning damage is the worst troubleshooting issues I have dealt with in 13 years of tech support.
Some of the damaged items were on a new surge protector/UPS and still got fried. Thanks for the tip waright. I'll let you know if it helps. Right now I'm thinking of sprinkling the site with the blood of a virgin goat to disspell the bad spirits. Only problem is you can't tell which ones are virgin.
