power surges

What kind of surge protector are you using? There's a big difference between a power strip with a circuit breaker on it and a surge protector that has clamping coils. I would recommend APC as they will warranty any connected equipment and replace it if it gets fried. All you have to do is make sure you send in the warranty card. It is possible that current can come over the coax cable, but APC makes a surgearrest that will protect that as well. Tripp Lite and Monster Cable make good ones too.

Blaze is right. You need to invest in a good surge protector that protects both you power and cable lines.

You should also consider installing a whole house surge protector on your electrical panel. ($65 - $85 depending where you buy it.)

This will give you a first line of defense backed up with surge protector on your TV.

In order for any surge protector to really do its job you must have a good electrical ground on the circuit you are plugging your TV into. Test the ground before spending money on new appliances or surge protectors. While you are testing be sure your home has a good ground at all electrical panels and distribution points. If you have grounding problems or the circuit isn't a three wire grounded circuit you need to fix this problem first.

Good grounding and good surge protection will protect you also when WAPA goes out which has been fairly often recently on STT. Generators suddenly dropping off line can cause bad things to happen on power lines.

Jim

Hello Eddie,

It has been my practice during big storms and power outages to unplug pretty much everything except the refrigerator. I know, sounds like a pain in the butt but its a matter of habit now.

I don't recall ever losing anything during a storm. However I have lost several electronics when the power was going off and on.

There have been a lot of power outages lately.

--Islander

Also, if it continues to happen when there isn't a storm, I would suggest getting a voltmeter and testing your plugs. My girlfriend's mother had a big problem with the lines coming in directly from WAPA (on STX). Giant surges were frying everything that touched a plug. They even tried to put in a main line surge protector, and it blew that as well. She had to get WAPA to come out and fix the line, which they did.

-Keith-

It's a pretty common occurrence on STX for people to lose electronics and applicances due to power surges from WAPA. And there doesn't have to be a storm in progress for this to happen. Buy the best surge protectors you can find. They're well worth the investment!

A voltmeter even a digital one probably doesn't repond fast enough to show you a power surge. It will tell you if you have an over voltage problem. Also you would have to be watching the meter when it happened.

Whole house surge protectors come in different sizes and with different capacities of how many Jules of energy thay can absorb and how fast they are.

If the surge protector is wired into your main panel with a dedicated 15 amp breaker for each leg they should be able to respond to both surges and pro longed over voltage situations.

At one of my stateside homes, a squirel chewed the insulation on a high voltage line and caused a massive over voltage/ short ciruit in my neighborhood. Some of my neighbors lost not just electronics but appliances. My surge protector tripped the mains so I didn't have any damage.

To protect my self in the VI I have a whole house surge protector, individual surge protectors for my computer and TVs and an isolation transformer protecting my home entertainment center.

I also have a standby generator for when WAPA is down.

Jim

Here's a little different take, especially with respect to the tv.

My apt is about 60 feet or less up from the ocean, facing South. This means the side of the building here gets a majority of the rain blowing in.

My tv cable threads along the wall of the building, up and over to the back (north) side, where it connects to the pole. The cable has been in place for a number of years.

What seems to happen, and I'm not an engineer, is that after a big rain, the tv APPEARS not to work. Appears is the operative word here........but wait, if you hold down the on button you may hear a faint pfsssssst type sound. You may try this for several times or part of a day or night before finally, when the cable has dried???, if you hold DOWN the ON button, the tv will sputter back to life!

My neighbor and I have experienced the same problem......usually the tv does come back to life....seems that somehow something has to dry out so that the sparking??? doesn't occur.

www.tripplite.com

There are a variety of power regulation/conditioner products available from tripp-lite. Most will provide stable, clean, computer-safe 120v output from varying input voltages of around 78v-140v. I have used these products before for commercial purposes, and will recommend them every time.