Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This morning, I got up from the computer and went to church at about 11:00am. I left the computer on as well as my printer and Nikon film scanner (I usually don't do that, but I was running late). When I arrived back home, my mother in law told me that there was no electricity. I went to the circuit breaker box, and about half of the circuit breakers had been tripped! That made me a bit sick. The entire neighborhood was without power, and there had obviously been a huge surge before the power went down. I paid big bucks to have a surge supressor installed for the ENTIRE HOUSE. It is installed on the circuit breaker box. Entergy (the power company) came out and rewired some of the power lines. Everything came up except my office. The circuit breaker would not engage. I unplugged everything in my office, and the circuit breaker did engage. I slowly started plugging things back in, but when I tried to plug in the cable going to all of my computer-connected stuff, it tripped the breaker again. I examined the surge suppressor strips, and every one of the three was cooked! With black sooty stuff on them, and smelling like an electrical fire. I made a mad dash for the hardware store for more suppressor strips, and slowly started plugging things back in. Ahhhhhh...........everything seems to be okay. But I have little faith in surge suppressors now. The one protecting the house didn't seem to work. The one attached directly to the outlets on the wall didn't seem to work. The cheapest ones, the $10 surge suppressor strips that my computer, printers, scanners, hard drives, etc. are plugged into burned up. I guess that means they DID work. Leaves me with a bit of a sick feeling inside. The more expensive they were, the crappier they worked. Jeffery Smith New Orleans, LA http://www.400tx.com