Once upon a time Glen Farney shaped the electrons to say... > Wow.... that's a lot coming from you today. You eat chocolate AND coffee > today ? :-)
Nope - one packet of peanut butter crackers and some water is all so far today. ;-) > Direct lightning strike, I'm with the original poster, nothing will stop a > direct strike. You almost never have a direct strike on your equipment, and Well, if you have a direct strick ON your equipment, what was it doing outside? ;-) 'Direct strike' generally means the structure is hit, or the lines coming into the strucutre. > the electric grid tries to protect itself from such hits, but isn't designed > to protect all the users equipment as much as it is the grid itself. Oh yeah, the main concern is not having it blow out a transformer, etc. Consumers are on their own. :-) > Lightning strikes are protected by, of all things, lightning arrestors, > which are a straight path to ground when the voltage on the line goes up > beyond the normal range. It goes from being a high resistance to almost no Yeah, straight shunt to earth ground. Impressive beasties. > resistance reacting directly to the voltage spike itself. Also, over the > high voltage power lines are what they call "static wires" which among other > things, tries to intercept the lightning strikes, keeping it from hitting Yeah, the one or two 'thin' (relatively) cables you generally see running from tower to tower at the top of high-tension lines, clearly much smaller than the power cables themselves. Same idea as a lightning rod. > voltage swings into your house, which may or may not upset equipment. Heh, 'upset equipment' is such a calm way of putting it. > My folks had a lightning strike on a palm tree outside the house, it > followed the tree down, jumped to the sprinkler wires, into the house, onto > the telephone system, and fried a TV set, the TiVo modem on their S1 box, > and a few other things. The most spectacular part of it besides the burned > up tree, scattered stones, and the very skittish cat was one power > transformer which was plugged into an outlet exploded, sending plastic > fragments around the room, embedding in boxes 20' away with significant > force. Ouch. Just goes to show the freaky paths the current can take. > For what it's worth, I know my company offers whole house protection, not in > terms of UPS, but for voltage spikes, which while a little expensive, > protects everything in the house, and is generally quality equipment. If > you really want to protect everything, that's not a bad way to go. Yeah, whole home systems are the premium option and you can get surge-only or surge-with-UPS. I've looked at them myself and want to get one when I could afford it. But other home upgrades are higher priority. Well, wanted, since I'm planning to move now and don't expect to buy a new place for a while. Some of the systems I looked at could be upgraded. You could start with a surge protection system, then add batteries later to provide UPS, and even a secondary power feed for an external generator. -MZ -- megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me. http://www.GizmoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -><- Hail Eris "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171
