We had a nasty little electrical storm in our neck of the woods (literally) a couple of nights ago. Power went off for a few hours and all that normal-type nuisance stuff. However, what I did not expect was the damage that happened as a result of a monstrous power surge that ripped through our home. I’m still shelling out $MONEY to try to get back to normal.
I believe what happened was that a surge came through either our phone line or our cable line. And no, I didn’t have any kind of surge protection on the phone or cable lines. Never thought you’d need it, honestly. I do have these lines protected now, though, which is small comfort being that I’ve managed to make it this far in life without said protection unscathed, which means the money I’ve shelled out for the protection likely won’t be needed for another XXX years. But anyway, however the surge managed to get into my house, it fried my Vonage phone adapter, my cable modem, my Linksys WRT54GS wireless router, my main network switch for the house, all wired ethernet adapters in my computers, all of the phones in our house, and my laptop power adapter (which wasn’t even connected to my laptop, thankfully). Nice, eh?
Cost analysis of recovering from this little electrical hissy fit:
All told: $500 or so. Not too bad, I suppose. I’ve certainly heard worse. What’s more frustrating than anything is not having any phone or internet service for a day and therefore knocked out of being able to work. Thankfully, my awesome Cambridge VMware brethren had a replacement power adapter for my work laptop, so that only cost me $40 in gas/parking to drive the 3 hours back/forth to pick it up.
And because I know that you’re all thinking “well yeah, but if you hadn’t been too cheap to buy the $90 surge protector a couple of years ago, none of this would have happened”, I’ll freely admit that you’re absolutely right. =:( Sometimes my cheap nature ends up costing more than it saves. Case in point.
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Heh. Same thing happened here 2 months ago. Somehow I wonder if anything but a 2 foot airspace would be adequate for lightning.
My mistake was going cheap on replacements. I’m about to replace a few things that I bought quickly to get up and running again.
Insurance? Check your deductable.
Derek
Friday July 25, 2008 at 12:03 pm
What type of protector did you bought?
You should know, that just a surge protection isn’t enough. Usually you have a coarse protection(in your fuse box), medium protection (also in your fuse box, but protects every single room) and a surge protection (protects every electrical device) in your powerlines.
Additionally you should protect your telephone lines, cable lines, aerials, …
Oh wow, I totally didn’t even think about insurance covering any of this. Great idea, thanks guys!
@MPS: I bought a APC Back-UPS BE650G 8-outlet surge protector, with phone/data and cable surge protection. I have my phone line going in and coming out of it, as well as my main cable line now.
Friday July 25, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Something similiar happened to me some weeks ago, though I had luck.
Only my network adapter and the router were “electrified”, the rest seems to work flawless (more robust stuff?). Fun part is we have a cable protection, but not for the phone cables.
Yet getting back online still took ages as our modem (by our ISP) is so old that it was not compatible with newer routers, took some time to understand that –> useless expensive hotlines with all the same “directions” you knew before calling suck.
Friday July 25, 2008 at 2:01 pm@Jason: Sure, but with an UPS you just protect your PC and the connected devices to your UPS. What’s with your other devices just like TV, dish washer, microwave, sat-receiver, clocks,…
Mathias
Saturday July 26, 2008 at 3:32 am@MPS: What I did was stuck the UPS in the room that my circuit breaker is in, which is where the cable feed for the house comes in from the outside, as well as the phone line. I have my little networking closet right there, so plugged into the new UPS, I have surge protection for my router, cable modem, vonage box, and switch. I also have the main cable feed for the house coming into the surge protector and then back out of it into the splitters that go into the cable modem and TV’s throughout the house, etc.
Saturday July 26, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Check with your insurance company. Damage like this is often covered.
Friday July 25, 2008 at 11:48 am