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Rajaah

Rajaah

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Unearthed this surge protector in my box of old cords. When I turn it on, Grounded lights up but not Protected. What does that mean? Should I replace it?

Need a cord hub for my TV and systems, to put behind the entertainment center, and the main surge protector is otherwise occupied (and can't go behind furniture anyway, it needs to be accessible). Doing a big rearranging right now to make the TV room cleaner and more streamlined. It's been the exact same for six years.
 
Intrinsic

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Rajaah said:
View attachment 627152
View attachment 627153
Unearthed this surge protector in my box of old cords. When I turn it on, Grounded lights up but not Protected. What does that mean? Should I replace it?

Need a cord hub for my TV and systems, to put behind the entertainment center, and the main surge protector is otherwise occupied (and can't go behind furniture anyway, it needs to be accessible). Doing a big rearranging right now to make the TV room cleaner and more streamlined. It's been the exact same for six years.
Click to expand...
Pay the $6 and get one 5am overnight from Amazon.
 
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Kobayashi

Kobayashi

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Rajaah said:
View attachment 627152
View attachment 627153
Unearthed this surge protector in my box of old cords. When I turn it on, Grounded lights up but not Protected. What does that mean? Should I replace it?

Need a cord hub for my TV and systems, to put behind the entertainment center, and the main surge protector is otherwise occupied (and can't go behind furniture anyway, it needs to be accessible). Doing a big rearranging right now to make the TV room cleaner and more streamlined. It's been the exact same for six years.
Click to expand...
The metal oxide varistors in there degrade as they soak up overvoltage events. They typically have a thermal fuse in front to protect from bursting in a high energy event or overheating as their leakage current gets too high. If the light is off, my assumption is the fuse tripped and there is no power going to the the protection circuit. It would be likely safe to plug in (you can have it plugged in in an open area and check for any hot spots to be sure), but isn't going to protect any downstream components. If you've already got something upstream of it, maybe that doesn't matter - I'd also make the determination based on what you expect to plug into it - since you're planning on hooking up TVs and systems, I'd probably just buy a new one and save this for people to plug in cell phone chargers or something elsewhere.

By the way, it depends on the power quality you have, but the rough rule of thumb is to replace surge protectors every 5 years (or immediately if there's some evidence they clamped a big event). I'd again base this on what you're actually connecting to it. If you had really high dollar stuff, I'd also look at getting something for the service entrance - it's actually mandatory in the NEC as of 2020. That'll be way more effective than these power strips anyway.
 
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Rajaah

Rajaah

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Intrinsic said:
Pay the $6 and get one 5am overnight from Amazon.
Click to expand...

Using a different one right now. Turns out one of the two outlets in the wall behind the TV is dead. I'll need to get that fixed. Going to order a giant wall-based surge protector and plug everything TV-related into that.

I reorganized the TV setup for the first time in many years, and bundled all the cords through the TV stand so for the first time ever I don't have cords hanging anywhere.

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Koushirou Koushirou should like this
 
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Rajaah

Rajaah

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Kobayashi said:
The metal oxide varistors in there degrade as they soak up overvoltage events. They typically have a thermal fuse in front to protect from bursting in a high energy event or overheating as their leakage current gets too high. If the light is off, my assumption is the fuse tripped and there is no power going to the the protection circuit. It would be likely safe to plug in (you can have it plugged in in an open area and check for any hot spots to be sure), but isn't going to protect any downstream components. If you've already got something upstream of it, maybe that doesn't matter - I'd also make the determination based on what you expect to plug into it - since you're planning on hooking up TVs and systems, I'd probably just buy a new one and save this for people to plug in cell phone chargers or something elsewhere.

By the way, it depends on the power quality you have, but the rough rule of thumb is to replace surge protectors every 5 years (or immediately if there's some evidence they clamped a big event). I'd again base this on what you're actually connecting to it. If you had really high dollar stuff, I'd also look at getting something for the service entrance - it's actually mandatory in the NEC as of 2020. That'll be way more effective than these power strips anyway.
Click to expand...

Service entrance?

Yeah, that's what I figured, the protection got tripped on it and it's usable but needs to be replaced. The other one I'm using still has protection on it, also mad old though. Getting something newer/better for that wall. It's only for the five TV-related cords. I can't get back there anyway. Using the actual good surge protector for everything else, need to relocate it since II'm no longer running all kinds of cords everywhere.

Next step is to fix up my entire place the way I fixed up the TV area. I moved in a couple years ago and it looks like I moved in last week, depression from a death will do that.
 
Kobayashi

Kobayashi

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Rajaah said:
Service entrance?

Yeah, that's what I figured, the protection got tripped on it and it's usable but needs to be replaced. The other one I'm using still has protection on it, also mad old though. Getting something newer/better for that wall. It's only for the five TV-related cords. I can't get back there anyway. Using the actual good surge protector for everything else, need to relocate it since II'm no longer running all kinds of cords everywhere.

Next step is to fix up my entire place the way I fixed up the TV area. I moved in a couple years ago and it looks like I moved in last week, depression from a death will do that.
Click to expand...
Service entrance is where the power comes into the house - it's installed at the meter or in your main electrical panel on a dedicated breaker. If it's old, I wouldn't necessarily count on it to protect things and it might be worth replacing even if a status light is still on.
 
Control

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Kobayashi said:
If you had really high dollar stuff, I'd also look at getting something for the service entrance
Click to expand...
Kind of a separate topic, but it sounds like you might know? To what extent can you reasonably (or maybe even unreasonably) lightning/surge-proof your house? I'm paranoid about lightning damage here. I've never had it happen, but it's bitten family members nearby a few times. The house was built in the 50's and largely has it's original electrics intact.
 
Kobayashi

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Control said:
Kind of a separate topic, but it sounds like you might know? To what extent can you reasonably (or maybe even unreasonably) lightning/surge-proof your house? I'm paranoid about lightning damage here. I've never had it happen, but it's bitten family members nearby a few times. The house was built in the 50's and largely has it's original electrics intact.
Click to expand...
I think those whole home arresters are a good additional step for most houses. That's probably as far as I'd reasonably go (whole home at service entrance, surge protection power strips for sensitive electronics). For convenience, your utility can even install them in the meter if they're not douchebags (mine is unfortunately the douchebag type and wants to make a subscription out of it).

Getting into unreasonable territory: you can buy isolation transformers for protecting specific devices (example: https://www.tech-america.com/item/t...w-surge-120v-4-outlet-6ft-cord-taa-gsa/is1000). I think you'd have to be talking some very high dollar amount electronics to consider going that far though.
 
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Kajiimagi

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Control said:
Kind of a separate topic, but it sounds like you might know? To what extent can you reasonably (or maybe even unreasonably) lightning/surge-proof your house? I'm paranoid about lightning damage here. I've never had it happen, but it's bitten family members nearby a few times. The house was built in the 50's and largely has it's original electrics intact.
Click to expand...
Story time guys , take this for what it's worth.

On July5th 2002 my back went out at lunch the worst it's ever gone out before or sense (even counting the 7 back surgeries) AND my house was directly struck by lightning in one of those good ol hot humid air meets cooler land air motherfuckers of a thunderstorm in Myrtle Beach SC. Since at that time the power was bad about blinking mid day (brown out?) I had UPS units on anything electronic that I cared about. It went around / through multiple UPS & surge suppressors and fried all kinds of shit. It also fried every smoke detector. I walked around the house hunched over (back out) in the storm to make sure the house was not on fire. Also took 1 phase out of the 240v 1PH house transformer. Blew out my walls where it went to ground through the wood , blew all the vinyl siding off the house and set my plastic/vinyl dryer vent on fire. The insurance inspector that came over said he'd never seen lightning do that before. I had 2 Alienware PC's (when they were the Alienware) and one it blew cap banks off the PCB. My living room had a projection TV, a cable tv box, an OG Xbox, a DVD player, a receiver, and a PlayStation all plugged into the same UPS. It fried the DVD player and the Cable box but everything else was perfectly fine.

Point is a direct strike it doesn't much matter. That whole house arrestor may help in a near strike but a direct one? Nope. Thankfully where I live now we rarely see any lightning at all.
 
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Control

Control

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Kobayashi said:
I think those whole home arresters are a good additional step for most houses. That's probably as far as I'd reasonably go (whole home at service entrance, surge protection power strips for sensitive electronics). For convenience, your utility can even install them in the meter if they're not douchebags (mine is unfortunately the douchebag type and wants to make a subscription out of it).

Getting into unreasonable territory: you can buy isolation transformers for protecting specific devices (example: https://www.tech-america.com/item/t...w-surge-120v-4-outlet-6ft-cord-taa-gsa/is1000). I think you'd have to be talking some very high dollar amount electronics to consider going that far though.
Click to expand...
Oh, if those offer real protection that seems on the pretty reasonable side of things to me, although I might need something with a higher wattage rating. It doesn't really matter for most things, but every time it gets cloudy, I get a little paranoid about the computers, half because of the cost and half because of how much of a pain in the ass it would be if they got toasted. Got a couple of Furman PST-8 based on Wirecutter's review but was always skeptical about how much they'd really help.

Kajiimagi said:
Story time guys , take this for what it's worth.

On July5th 2002 my back went out at lunch the worst it's ever gone out before or sense (even counting the 7 back surgeries) AND my house was directly struck by lightning in one of those good ol hot humid air meets cooler land air motherfuckers of a thunderstorm in Myrtle Beach SC. Since at that time the power was bad about blinking mid day (brown out?) I had UPS units on anything electronic that I cared about. It went around / through multiple UPS & surge suppressors and fried all kinds of shit. It also fried every smoke detector. I walked around the house hunched over (back out) in the storm to make sure the house was not on fire. Also took 1 phase out of the 240v 1PH house transformer. Blew out my walls where it went to ground through the wood , blew all the vinyl siding off the house and set my plastic/vinyl dryer vent on fire. The insurance inspector that came over said he'd never seen lightning do that before. I had 2 Alienware PC's (when they were the Alienware) and one it blew cap banks off the PCB. My living room had a projection TV, a cable tv box, an OG Xbox, a DVD player, a receiver, and a PlayStation all plugged into the same UPS. It fried the DVD player and the Cable box but everything else was perfectly fine.

Point is a direct strike it doesn't much matter. That whole house arrestor may help in a near strike but a direct one? Nope. Thankfully where I live now we rarely see any lightning at all.
Click to expand...
Yeah, there's only so much you can do of course, but I've known enough instances of people getting random shit popped in their house during storms to make me worry about it.
 
Intrinsic

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Control said:
Oh, if those offer real protection that seems on the pretty reasonable side of things to me, although I might need something with a higher wattage rating. It doesn't really matter for most things, but every time it gets cloudy, I get a little paranoid about the computers, half because of the cost and half because of how much of a pain in the ass it would be if they got toasted. Got a couple of Furman PST-8 based on Wirecutter's review but was always skeptical about how much they'd really help.


Yeah, there's only so much you can do of course, but I've known enough instances of people getting random shit popped in their house during storms to make me worry about it.
Click to expand...
As I was joking about above, when we do shelter design for telecom sites one portion of that includes installing a Type I at service entrance which was usually a large MOV (metal oxide varistor) and Type II (mov/sad hybrid maybe) at the panel. Additionally a Type III device at equipment. More importantly than all that was the ground system though.

These devices (the Type 1 at service especially) clamp to ground and expect a low impedance ground system. That’s way easier to design, implement, and test at a new tower site than it is at home. I was even going to ask one of my old Motorola R-56 guys to help design the grounding system at my new home build. But then realize we still lose equipment in full R-56 audited sites and the additional cost required to do something residentially… eh. In a direct strike situation like Kajiimagi Kajiimagi mentioned maybe it is helpful (that also happened to my best friend’s parent’s house, the pictures of the inside were crazy).

At the new home we’re going to prioritize a whole home SPD and work with the builder and electrician to find out how we can improve the grounding and ensure correct bonding. I know we can ask for a Ufer ground and upgrade a couple other small things without going bonkers on extra cost.

Sorry, rambling post since baby needed a bottle at 3:30am
 
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