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surge protectors karsan 06-11-2006
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Posted by Ralph Mowery on June 11, 2006, 6:06 pm

> It is dangerous to have more than one surge protectors in you home I
> have 3 surge protectors running in my home.
>

If you mean the kind that plug into the wall (may be called power strips)
and they are installed in seperate outlets, you can not have too many in
your house.
The only thing is if you have too many things using too much current plugged
in to them. Then a fuse or breaker should blow or trip.

I have 4 or 5 in use right now. One on each of the TV sets, computers and
my ham radio gear.

In a house I lived in before I moved , having 3 in use probably saved me a
bunch of equipment. A surge during a lightning storm took out 3 of the
protectors but did not get any of the electronic gear except an unprotected
telephone and an internal surge supressor saved most of the electronics in
the oven control.




Posted by karsan on June 12, 2006, 12:49 am

Ralph Mowery wrote:
> > It is dangerous to have more than one surge protectors in you home I
> > have 3 surge protectors running in my home.
> >
>
> If you mean the kind that plug into the wall (may be called power strips)
> and they are installed in seperate outlets, you can not have too many in
> your house.
> The only thing is if you have too many things using too much current plugged
> in to them. Then a fuse or breaker should blow or trip.
>
> I have 4 or 5 in use right now. One on each of the TV sets, computers and
> my ham radio gear.
>
> In a house I lived in before I moved , having 3 in use probably saved me a
> bunch of equipment. A surge during a lightning storm took out 3 of the
> protectors but did not get any of the electronic gear except an unprotected
> telephone and an internal surge supressor saved most of the electronics in
> the oven control.

I have a surge protector for my computer, the telephone, and our lamp.
We only have one televison.


Posted by Bob on June 12, 2006, 12:47 pm

karsan wrote:

> It is dangerous to have more than one surge protectors in you home I
> have 3 surge protectors running in my home.

I have a whole house "protector" at the electrical panel and several
smaller units scattered throught the house. I have had several
lightning hits in the near vicinity and have never had electrical
damage. But I have lost 4 TV's from lightning coming in on the cable -
all damaged in the tuner sections rather than power sections. And I
have had computer modems fry from surges on the telephone line. So
from that, I deduce the whole house unit is doing it's job, but the
others are questionable.
Bob


Posted by w_tom on June 13, 2006, 12:24 am
Was cable earthed before entering a building? If not, then yes,
cable may be an incoming source of electricity called a surge. Cable
must drop down and make a 'less than 10 foot' connection to a same
earth ground used by AC electric and telephone. If cable enters house
without dropping down and connecting to earth, then yes, cable can be
the incoming path of a surge that was seeking earth ground
destructively through tuners.

No protector is required to earth coax cable surges. But the most
important component of a protector - earth ground - must connect to
that cable. Connected so that a surge finds earth at the building
entrance instead of via TV tuners.

Actually we don't know that any protectors were doing their job. You
suffered damage. If, for example, the telephone line 'whole house'
protector and AC electric 'whole house' protector were not using a same
earth ground, then damage could still occur. Protection starts with
and is defined by earthing - not by some protector. The effective
protector makes a 'less than 10 foot' connection to same earth ground
used by all other protectors.

What makes problems more complex is that plug-in protectors have a
history of offering surges more destructive paths through household
appliances.

Forget that protectors are protection. What was the earth ground?
Earth ground is the protection. How were those protectors earthed?

Don't assume a modem was damaged by a surge from phone line. Don't
think of surges as a wave crashing on a beach. Surges just don't work
that way. First electricity flows in everything in a path through that
modem. Everything is conducting the same electricity. Long afterwards
(microseconds later), something in that path is destroyed. That path
could be incoming on phone line. Or a destructive path through modem
can be incoming on AC electric or cable; outgoing on phone line.
Notice - first there must be both an incoming and outgoing path.
Notice, the cable is not directly connected to computer. Since
numerous household items may be conductors, then even a cable surge
could have found a path to earth via that computer modem.

Any incoming utility could have been an incoming surge path into the
computer. However most modems are damaged by surges incoming on AC
electric; outgoing to earth via phone lines. No 'wave crashing on a
beach'. An incoming path and an outgoing path to earth must exist to
have damage.

You don't know if phone line was incoming or outgoing path based upon
what was posted. You only know a modem was in a destructive path from
cloud to earth. And that path existed because something was not
properly earthed where it enters the building. How do you learn from
and fix the problem? Start with earth ground. Is it the best earthing
on the property? Does every utility make a 'less than 10 foot'
connection to that one earthing electrode? IOW do all utilities enter
at a same location or is that earth ground expanded to connect to all
incoming utilities? We don't yet know whether cable or TV wire was the
incoming source or outgoing path to earth. Analysis must start by
identifying both incoming and outgoing path through that modem and
those TV tuners.

How did lightning from a cloud find earth ground through those tuners
and modem? Until we can answer that question, then it is only a guess
why something was damaged and no idea yet how to fix this human created
failure.

You cannot deduce the 'whole house' protector is doing anything
effective until the most essential part of a protection system - earth
ground - is verified. Did a surge enter on phone line if telco had
installed a 'whole house' protector -for free? Well again, what is
that protector earthed to. Protection is defined mostly by the quality
of earthing.

Meanwhile, what did those plug-in protectors have for a 'less than 10
foot' connection to earth? No less than 10 foot connection? Then of
course they were not effective.

Bob wrote:
> I have a whole house "protector" at the electrical panel and several
> smaller units scattered throught the house. I have had several
> lightning hits in the near vicinity and have never had electrical
> damage. But I have lost 4 TV's from lightning coming in on the cable -
> all damaged in the tuner sections rather than power sections. And I
> have had computer modems fry from surges on the telephone line. So
> from that, I deduce the whole house unit is doing it's job, but the
> others are questionable.
> Bob


Posted by Joshua Putnam on June 13, 2006, 1:07 am
w_tom1@usa.net says...

> No protector is required to earth coax cable surges. But the most
> important component of a protector - earth ground - must connect to
> that cable. Connected so that a surge finds earth at the building
> entrance instead of via TV tuners.

I've looked rather closely at my coax entrance -- only the outer
conductor is grounded. The center conductor is not. (Shouldn't be too
surprising, if you shorted them both to ground, it would attenuate the
signal a bit, no?)

What, other than a surge protector, stops transients on the center
conductor of cable TV?

--
josh@phred.org is Joshua Putnam
<http://www.phred.org/~josh/>
Braze your own bicycle frames. See
<http://www.phred.org/~josh/build/build.html>

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