So much for fancy surge protectors

[vito]

Recently my daughter's home had a very close lightening strike, and enough of the power traveled through the ground and into her home wiring to blow out her flat screen TV and a few other appliances (but no fire, fortunately). That got me to thinking about surge protectors (which I know will not protect against a lightening strike) for my living room and bedroom flat screen TV's. I bought two protectors on Amazon and all was well for several months. A few days ago Comcast went out across much of the nation including where I live, but within a few hours my internet signal was back in operation but not my cable TV connection. After trying all of the recommended actions, Comcast said I needed a technician to come to solve the problem. After waiting several days without my cable TV, the technician came and at first was confused as what the problem was. Then he noticed that my fancy surge protectors not only had the electric power cords plugged into them, but had the incoming coaxial cable that brings the cable signal to my TV's. In both rooms the TV's were out, but when I eliminated the connection to the surge protectors, the TV signal returned fully. So much for trying to be prudent and careful. I still have the power cords plugged into the surge protector, but not the cable for my TV and internet signal. I post this just in case anyone loses their cable connection and does not think to check their surge protectors.

 

[Mobuck]

My internet/TV input is buried so I quit using the surge protector things. For better or not, I switched to a medium capacity APC and my computer has been functioning better.

 

[Jeepnik]

Electronics in my house are all surge protected. I consider it cheap insurance. My computer has a ups that gives me time for an orderly shutdown.

My TV & DVR have a ups so my wife doesn’t miss and shows. The best and largest ups is on my tankless water heater. Why you ask. Well just let the power go out when your wife is in the shower and you’ll understand.

 

[Pat-inCO]

It's called GROUNDING.

I've told this story many times, so I will only do an overview here.
Thirty some years ago I got into a new to me place. Since I am into Ham Radio I
put up a 28foot antenna. I also grounded it TWICE (one to the front of the house,
and one to the back). One ground used the copper water pipe as the connection
and the other was connected to an eight foot ground rod. The antenna had a
ground connection via inductor (coil), from the ground side to the driven element.

You say . . . so? Well, ground connections are NOT to dissipate lightning strikes,
but rather to bleed off the charge build up from around your house.

About a year after I put up my antenna, I was out in the back porch and
EVERYTHING went white, followed almost immediately by a HUGE clap of
thunder. It was raining and a bolt of lightning struck my across the street
neighbor's tree. Blew out a four inch wide strip of bark from the tree.

Zero, zip, nada, was affected in my house. He lost his TV, fridge, microwave, and
a bunch of other things. - - - It also blew a four inch diameter hole in the ground
at the base of the tree, that appeared to be way more than three feet deep.

WHY am I mentioning this? Because from what I can tell, the majority of damage
done by lightning is from charge build-up around your house! - - - My house was
not affected by the SIGNIFICANT discharge across the street. Think about it.

You do what you want. But I make sure I have multiple ground connections,
around my house. :wink:

YMMV!

:roll:

P.S. to vito:
Didn't we talk about this more than once before?

 

[blume357]

I have never been able to figure out how some boxed surge protector is gong to protect anything from a direct or even close lightning strike... for the simple reason I've seen lighting come out of a fireplace and peal up 4 ft of carpet just to get the ground in a wall plug.

 

[blammer]

Years ago I had similar internet connection problems when I put the INTERNET cable from the modem into an UPS's (Uninterrupted Power Supply) internet protection outlet (also tried with cable TV when I had it). It attenuated the signal enough that I got spotty and slow internet. Have not tried since.

Well built surge protectors are good as they will sacrifice themselves to save connected devices from power spikes. But they do nothing to protect against brown-outs or power loss. You may not care about the low- or no- power conditions if your devices an tolerate them. You might want to consider a UPS to protect A/C POWER for things like computers so you can shut them down cleanly to save data and not risk some kind of data or operating system corruption. Not sure how power fluctuations effect modern TV's, but its nice to be able to keep watching things like severe storm coverage if the power goes out.

 

[wheelgun1958]

Internal fuse?

 

[gramps]

My surge protectors have a breaker switch that shunts spikes to a dedicated ground.
gramps

 

[woodsy]

My whole-house surge protector (by Siemens) simply sits there and waits for bad spikes and dumps them to ground, through a dedicated 40-amp breaker. Working great for three years, while some neighbors are having troubles.