This is my suburban NJ house -- we have had crazy storms recently. Have never had this happen .. even when closer hit. Nothing has been touched .. very strange.
This just happened to me. The things you are describing are damage from the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) associated with the lightening strike. You should file a claim with your insurance company as there are probably more damaged things in the house and this stuff will start piling up...
Our lightening strike hit our satellite dish, so we had some direct current damage from that (all of our electronics near our metallic eaves got fried) and then just about everything else in the house with a circuit board (except for the computers, which turn out to be shielded very well!) were fried by the associated EMP. (Our house has concrete walls and some electronics were spared due to that as the bolt hit us from a distance, at a shallow angle. Based on the pattern of damage, the shielding provided by the walls, and the pathway through our wood roof for radiation to enter, we can even see the direction in the sky where the bolt came from.)
Crazy storm w/ lightning came through (again) -- couple hours ago. Heard the hit - lights went out twice - back on. On investigation: All the ground fault breakers tripped ... noticed a few others including the gas dryer's breaker. Tripped as I tried to reset -- smoked (always bad).
On investigation -- The power line cord splices in two as it enters the unit. One goes to the guts ... the other to the transformer that runs the electronic controls. The control harness has this red (guess capacitor) connecting line and neutral (it's not on the wire diagram?)
Any idea what it does? Its a 120v transformer. Diagram says 10v out
Also:
Most of my Lutron dimmer switches also blew (20) -- as well as two cable boxes/ TV's and my very good business printer in the office (naturally the old one is fine)
It seems everything else is working -- including my two newish AC systems .. I hope.
Crazy storm w/ lightning came through (again) -- couple hours ago. Heard the hit - lights went out twice - back on. On investigation: All the ground fault breakers tripped ... noticed a few others including the gas dryer's breaker. Tripped as I tried to reset -- smoked (always bad).
Wires in the house (and circuit boards) conduct electrons from the EMP and collect an induced current. When this current flows through the ground wires, some GFCI and Arc Fault breakers will be tripped. (My GFCI and Arc Fault circuits closest to the roof and walls all tripped, while my interior/shielded circuits didn't get enough current.)
We found that some electronics were more sensitive than others. I also have a friend that got struck a few years ago. It seems that TV's are really weak to this sort of thing (all of ours were trashed), HVAC systems, and hot water heaters get it also. (I assume this is because all of the ducting and piping also collects current.)
We also had current induced in our drywall corner bead and had some drywall blow-outs where sparks shot out of the drywall. (This, in itself, would have been really cool if it happened somewhere else.)
As we've opened up all of our damaged equipment, we've found that on circuit boards; some relays fused (we also had a door security reed sensor on a metal door frame weld closed) and semiconductors (resistors, microchips, etc.) exploded).
Attached is a copy of an exploded chip on our HVAC control board. Just like the fried component you see on your dryer, we are finding that just about everything that isn't working has some sort of burned or exploded semiconductor on the circuit boards.
It may be worth trying the $160 board ... it's cheaper vs getting a new SQ set at 2k+
One of the nasty parts of this, which we experienced and I expect you will experience going forward, is that when one upstream is fixed, other downstream problems are uncovered.
For example; your control board in the dryer could be fried also. (Having the insurance claim helps as these things are uncovered - we just keep adding to the list with our adjuster.) BTW - You'll want to keep any damaged parts you are fixing. The insurance company will prefer to come by and see everything not working and/or damaged first, before you fix anything. We had to get some things up and running before the adjuster could come, like our hot water and HVAC, which they understood and were fine to just survey the broken parts.
We have a combination boiler that provides hot water and radiant heat water for the house. When we fixed the control board for the unit and fired it up to test the hot water, we also tried the hydronic system to make sure it worked. When we flipped the switch for that, our boiler control board started fizzling and burned up like a marshmallow in a camp fire. When we fixed that boiler control, we tried everything again and found that our hydronic zone thermostats were also fried.
^ So you'll want to test everything in the house, even the stuff you aren't using right now!
