Author Topic: Surge Protectors  (Read 2132 times)

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Offline Peggy

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Surge Protectors
« on: Dec 24, 2007, 01:30:55 AM »
It is a VERY stormy night tonight here in Oregon.
It is cold, rainy and very, very windy!

And I am breaking a rule that I made for myself years ago after a very bad experience with a power surge.  Never leave your computers running during a storm!

In 1992 or so, My ex and I had a lightening fast (yeah, right) Epson 8086 computer. This was the model before the 286, which was before the 386, before the 486, which came before the Pentium's. LOL... 

It was spring and we had a rare (for the San Francisco Bay Area) lightening storm.... Lightening hit a power cable coming into our house, snapped it in two.  We had a power surge come into our house. 

We lost our fridgerator, alarm clocks, television, stereo. Basically we lost EVERYTHING, except what we had on a surge protector.  And that was our lightening fast 8086!

Somewhere I still have a picture of the surge protector. It really took a hit, the power coming into the house caused a small fire(?) in the protector, and there is a black spot and some of the metal casing was kind of melted away.  But, our computer ran!

That experience taught me that during a storm anything electrical really should be turned off, and unplugged.. especially your high end pricey things... Television, Computer, Fancy dancy fridge....

But, it also taught me how valuable a simple surge protector is. Some of them cost less than $10.00 and can save you hundreds of dollars! I put them on all my electronics now, I even get the kinds that allow me to plug in telephones and modems into them just in case those lines are ever affected, after all there is electric running through those lines!

Two things to remember about surge protectors:

1. A power strip is NOT necessarily a surge protector, so read the label.  Make sure you are getting a surge protector. 

2.  If the light on the surge protector is blinking, it's time to replace it. The blinking light means that the surge protector part is worn out.  There is a limited life on these things... they are constantly protecting and believe me, we get brown outs and other fluctuations all the time....

And if you have enough money.. battery back ups with built in surge protection is even better!  But, that is another article!

have a good one, Peggy
How are you?  I'm great!  Glad to see you! Hope we meet again!

 

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