Lightning Protection in Stillwater

Homes in a college town

Stillwater grew up around Oklahoma State, so the housing is a real mix: older brick and frame homes in the neighborhoods near campus and downtown, newer subdivisions to the west and north, and plenty of rental houses owned by people who don't live in them. A strike on a rental can go unreported until a tenant notices a smell or a dead circuit.

On a residential system we place air terminals along the ridges, chimneys, and dormers, run copper or aluminum conductors down the least visible corners, and ground them at the base of the house. On a new build, conductors can usually be hidden in the attic and walls. See residential lightning protection and new construction lightning protection.

Acreage, barns, and horse property outside town

Once you leave the city limits, Payne County turns into rolling pasture, hay ground, and blackjack oak timber, with a lot of families on five to forty acres. A metal shop, a hay barn, or a horse barn on a rise is often the tallest thing for half a mile.

We look at the whole place in one visit (house, barn, shop, and well house) so the grounding ties together and the trip covers everything. See Oklahoma farm and ranch lightning protection.

Churches, small businesses, and older buildings

Stillwater, Perkins, and Cushing all have churches with steeples and brick commercial buildings that have stood through decades of storms without protection. We route conductors to follow the lines of the building so the system doesn't change how it looks. See church and steeple lightning protection. Around Cushing, where tanks and pipeline equipment sit near homes and shops, we handle the buildings and leave the operator's equipment to the operator.

How we do the work

Linzy Lightning Protection is a family business, and Joe is the third generation of his family to install lightning rods. Every system is designed with the goal of following NFPA 780, the national standard for lightning protection: strike termination on the roof, a continuous conductor path, proper bonding of metal like gutters, vents, and antennas, and grounding sized for the soil. Red clay and sandy ground in Payne County behave differently, so we test and design for the site.

Spring hail is common here, and hail can bend or loosen air terminals. If you already have a system, it's worth a look after a big storm or a new roof. See lightning rod repair.