Here's advice: in thunder, you should unplug your electronic gadgets, computer, network routers, modems. Don't just turn them off, unplug them. A lightning strike can easily jump the gap of a switch that's turned off.
I've been doing this since I many years ago heard a tech supporter talk about how, after a thunder storm they always had many more calls the day after from people who'd had their routers fry.
I'm reminded of this because you may have noticed Pascal has been absent from commenting a while. It turns out two close lightning strikes near his home fried both the local electricity network and the power brick for his broadband modem. The latter despite the fact that he has surge protectors and a lightning rod.
5 comments:
Having lost one computer, a printer, a telephone answering machine, and a microwave oven to (separate) lightning strikes, I'll second that.
Here's another danger: A lightning strike fried the ground-fault interrupter in our hot tub. But it didn't break the circuit. So, electricity kept flowing to the hot tub, but now there was no protection from being electrocuted by a short.
So, after every lightning storm, press the test button on all your GFIs.
Pat
(Keren, I think your comment was meant for my Power-Of-Source blog, thank you, so I've added it to a post there.)
Evidently, there are differences in how electrical systems are designed and built in various countries. In Canada, we usually don't have these problems, because our power lines are protected by lightning arrestors and 'skywires' above them to take the
hits from lightning and ground it out before it damages other equipment. Even in really bad storms, we can leave our stuff plugged in and not have it 'fried'.
Whoever designed your electric system must have gone cheap on the protective equipment. That's my guess.
The only way you can be 100% assured of not having your electronics fried by lightning is to not have them plugged in when lightning strikes. The surge suppressors and so on are designed only to ablate minor power fluctuations, not massive voltage differentials.
"I'll second that."
If I counted correctly, you also "thirded", "fourthed" and "fifthed" that!
Like, ouch, man.
Ah, I think my butt has stopped smoking now... Lucky I found that puddle. (hissss!)
"In Canada, we usually don't have these problems"
There are many Lebanese living in Canada.
But obviously, they're not in charge of designing the electrical systems THERE...
"our power lines are protected by lightning arrestors and 'skywires' above them"
In theory, the top electrical wire in all of Lebanon's power lines serves solely to divert lightning. In theory.
We Lebanese are highly skilled at rhetorical theorizing... (No! Really? Gettoutahere!)
I guess even that top wire keeps failing. That's telling how derelict (derelictious?) our national electricity network is.
Since the start of the civil war in 1975, it hasn't been modernized one iota.
Obsolete or not, we'd be happy if at least it had enjoyed proper maintenance!
As for the next time when I tell you about our roads... well, meanwhile you can safely extrapolate. :-p
Post a Comment