Re: Never Underestimate the Worth of Surge Protectors on your Computer Stuff

George Graves wrote:
Yesterday morning, I awoke to the acrid smell of well-cooked electronics components. I went into the living room in time to see BOTH of my Dish-Net receivers (one is High-Definition, the other a standard DVR) pouring out gray, acrid smoke. I went into the laundry room and turned off the affected breaker. About that time, I heard a siren and saw a fire-truck pull up into my street. I went out to ask the firemen what was going -on, and it turns out that something had happened to a transformer down the street and it was putting more than 200 volts (I found out later) on one leg of the three-phase house current. In my place, that leg feeds ALL of the wall sockets in the house. Many modern electronic components are actually powered-up to a "standby mode" all the time so that they can be switched-on from a remote control wand.

I had slept-in on Friday because of a late night the night before. My computer is set to switch itself on at 8:00 AM and the "fault" occured at about 9:00 AM, so when the overvoltage occured, my computer was on. Also on were my Sharp LCD monitor, my Linksys Router, my two USB hubs, my big networked laser printer, my color printer, my Monsoon speaker system, my ADSL box, my flatbed scanner, etc. With the power off, it was impossible to check the computer stuff, so I had to wait until the electric company knocked on my door to tell me that all was restored.

I disconnected both the of dead satellite boxes, and then went to check my computer stuff. Nothing, no lights, and the computer wouldn't boot. I got down on my hands and knees with my trusty DVOM, and started to check for voltages. I have a number of these surge-protected power strips daisy-chained under my desk to connect all of my computer equipment. I have five of them due to the fondness of the computer industry for wall-warts instead of REAL power supplies. One wall-wart will usually cover two recepticals on one of these strips, hence the need for so many strips. Well I found three of them dead, their metal-oxide varistors having given their all during the recent electrical unpleasantness. I keep a few of these things around the house and buy a mess of them when I see a good deal at the local electronic flea market ($2 apiece?). So I replace all of the dead strips and Voila! everything came back up and no computer equipment was damaged or lost! If you don't have surge protectors on ALL of your computer equipment and peripherals, go out and buy them TODAY before its too late (Wintrolls too).

As for the rest of my electronic equipment. I didn't fare too well. In my audio and video systems, I lost:

Both satellite receivers
DVD player
LaserDisc player
Phillips active video control unit (@$1000 new and irreplaceable)
Digital HD VCR ($900 new and irreplaceable)
both of the subwoofers in my video speaker system
My main subwoofer for my stereo.

Luckily, my stereo was off except for my tube pre-amp and it only blew a fuse in back and is up and running again -sans subwoofer, of course.

Otherwise, I lost my bedside alarm clock and the charger for my cell phone.

The electric company says they're not liable because a squirrel got across the transformer -an act of God. I'm an electrical engineer and I say poppy***. First, of all, a squirrel across both phases would form a partial short-circuit and LOWER the voltage to the affected houses, not raise it. Secondly, the other phase, which powers my overhead lights, and my refrigerator was fine, and thirdly, their fault protection should have kicked-in instead of feeding almost 200 volts through people's house wiring for almost an hour until the repair crew arrived to cut it off! And fourthly, they should have some measures in place to keep squirrels away from vulnerable open terminals like that. AFAIC, its negligence on their part any way you slice it.

I called for a claim form to be sent me anyway, and am prepared to fight this all the way to court.


I wish you the best of luck going after the electric company. Give 'em hell. ;-) BTW, do you have coverage under homeowners insurance? You might want to look into that. I had two computers fried a couple of years ago because of an electrical storm, and it was covered.

As for the surge protection - consider yourself lucky. Those MOV based surge protectors fail quite frequently, and often allow the connected equipment plugged into them to die right along with them. Trust me, I installed satellite dishes and home theatre systems for 5 years, and have seen first hand what surge damage those devices can let through.

In theory, they're supposed to give themselves up like a sacrificial lamb before allowing the connected equipment to be damaged, but there are so many poorly designed/made MOV based protectors out there, some companies really should be criminally charged for putting them out on the market. If one is going to use them, at least get a semi-decent one that has 3 MOVs (like a Panamax unit). Personally, I don't like them as they're not as effective as proper grounding and a 'whole home' shunt type protection system in combination with series mode protection devices like the SurgeX, Brickwall, or ZeroSurge units.

On top of that, the quality series mode protection devices don't contaminate the ground line, and when used with power balancing devices, you can reduce the noise floor in equipment particularly sensitive to ground line contamination (ie: equipment w/delicate zero crossing detection circuitry, hifi audio equipment, etc.).

-Rick
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