It’s the time of year for saving money!
Last week my power grid decided to do a momentary stutter-step outage. It was maybe one second long at the most, but it was enough to inspire every electric clock in the house to blinking, “set clock.”
Also, it “took out” a piece of audio gear, or so I thought.
I live in Colorado. Denver to be precise. And while Colorado does not host the most lightning strikes per annum (that honor goes to Florida) it does rank a close second. During the summer, “rain” here is usually a thunder storm of varying intensity. Last year a spring hail storm in my neighborhood trashed every roof (and a lot of cars). This summer a thunderstorm in Lakewood, which borders Denver on the west, was severe enough to destroy greenhouses. So, yes, Colorado gets a lot of the kind of weather that can wreak havoc with electrical grids.
I live in a three-year-old home that when it was built included a whole house spike protector. Nowadays that’s a standard building practice for new construction in Colorado. I suppose some trusting souls might actually depend on it to protect their electronics from damage. That would be a mistake.
Because I’m hyper-aware of the damage that can be caused by a nearby lightning strike I do not depend solely on my whole house spike protector. Every audio component in my systems has some sort of power protection between it and the wall. I have several PS Audio Devices – an Octet, Dectet, and old Quartet as well as a Premier power plant. I also use an APC S15, Core Power 150, and Audience aR-2p. Some, such as the APC S15 are dedicated to a computer attached to my main system, while others, such as the Dectet, protect power amps. Devices move around, depending on what is in a system, but there is always something as a back-up to the whole-house protector.
During the three years I’ve been in my current abode I’ve had blessedly few major events besides the couple I’ve already mentioned. Occasionally I’ve found that the Dectet that protects my small main-floor audio/video system gets tripped into protect mode. It’s twitchy. I reset it and life goes on.
The incident last week produced somewhat different results – it caused all the electric clocks to need attention, but none of the spike protectors were tripped except one – the Audience aR2p. It was residing in my bedroom, protecting a system that consists of a PS Audio Sprout, Sonos Connect, loudspeakers and an Aperion powered subwoofer. After the outage my wife told me she was hearing strange thumping noises for upstairs. Armed with a baseball bat (in case it was burglar) I found that the PS Audio Sprout was in power up/shut-down endless-repeat hell, producing a bass transient with each cycle. I unplugged it and the noises ceased.
Because I can be a bit dense first thing on a Sunday morning, I assumed the Sprout had been cooked. I disconnected it, took it to my office and began the process of generating a repair order. But, then because I’m curious, I plugged the Sprout into another AC outlet and it worked as if nothing had happened. So, the Sprout was OK.
When I looked on the floor, behind a hutch, I saw that the Sprout had been plugged into the Audience aR2p, so my next wrong conclusion was that the Audience power conditioner had given up its life to save the Sprout. Naturally I contacted John MacDonald from Audience. His first reply was, “Did you reset the circuit breaker?” My answer, “What circuit-breaker?” indicated that I had not. When I did the Audience was also returned to full functionality. Back to business as usual.
I wish I could write that given all the effort I spend making sure my power line is protected has been or will be 100% effective. I know from experience that if there was a lightning hit close enough to my home that all the protection in the world may not save gear from getting toasted – lighting can and does attack your gear from multiple entry points, including cable (having fiber optic can help) and phone lines, and sometimes it just skips over to damage something because it’s feeling nasty.
What is the best practice for protection from lighting strike damage to your audio gear? Simple – run around your house like a madman disconnecting every electrical device of value from the wall…I call it my 2:00 minute dash…
Power conditioners are not even a close second best…
Last summer, in Florida, we had a nearby lightning strike during a thunder storm. Close enough that I walked outside in the rain to see if anything was on fire — it was the neighbor’s palm tree — it’s top was gone, but no fire.
Our damage was the garage door opener and plasma TV. All the audio/video stuff was protected by guaranteed power strips. I was curious and read the guarantee — I was surprised to find out that the guarantee only lasts for two years (some only one year). I didn’t know this. I bought all new power strips. I needed a new and bigger TV anyway, but you may want to check around see how much protection you really have.
I do that 2 minute dash pretty regularly, being retired I am often enough home when the day’s thunderstorm rolls in. First to get unplugged is the plasma tv and b&w subwoofer, since they are only on a power strip. They used to be on UPSes with everything else, but their misbehaviors (requiring repairs) in the past led me to not do that any more, better safe than sorry. I also try to unplug that power strip any time it looks like we might get some weather and I am not going to be home. A subsequent dash is made if the storms are severe (and really close by), then all the UPSes get unplugged also along with a few other things. Out in my boonies those power hiccups are still not all that infrequent, though maybe they’ve finally figured out the hour(s)-long power outages (knock on wood), at least for the time being (yeah sure).
You are much more cautious than I am. So what is wrong with relying on the whole-house surge protector? My local utility offers one with a monthly fee, and indemnifies the electronics in the house, up to a limit.
My experience so far with a whole house protector is that it is inadequate. It has NEVER been tripped although I have had instances where conditioners have tripped. And do you really think that your utility will pay up without undue hassle? If it is anything like package insurance, good luck collecting…and do you think they will willingly give you full value? In the end it comes down to a quote from “The Mask” – “Do you feel lucky?” As I age, I feel less, so…
Thanks for the reply. After checking the utility company’s insurance, I don’t think I’ll pursue it any further, if as you say the device will not trip reliably. The reimbursement rates are really low if the equipment is more than two or three years old, as most of mine is.
I gave up on AEP as far with numerous short second or so power outages so after the most recent one I put all my electronics including computer and all my home theaters on 1500 VA Cyber Power UPS’s.
The one for my computer is a pure sine wave model, the rest simulated sine wave. I’ve had a few short power outages since and my meter was replaced by a smart meter but everything has kept running.
We also have a whole house surge protector and each theater’s was on its own surge protector/[power conditioner before I put in all the UPS units – five in all!
It was not cheap and Cyber Power told me not to put a power conditioner between the UPS and my equipment but I can sleep better.
As far as lightning strikes go, that’s why I have insurance.
I live in NJ and have had 2 lightening strikes that damaged equipment in 2 different houses. The first strike occurred on the telephone pole on the street and blew up the transformer. I had a whole house spike protector, throughout the house power conditioners/surge protectors such as Furman and Shunyata. No luck blew out my 2 krell amps and my Audio Research Preamp. Insurance covered the repair. 5 years later I moved to another house same thing whole house spike protector etc. Lightening struck the tree outside my house blew out the sprinkler and alarm system my JVC projector 2 Blu ray players, Classe Processor and the FIOS cable box. I sent in the surge protectors to claim the coverage. Shunyata and Furman found no problems. The insurance covered my 10,000 dollar repair bill. So what was the problem. The alarm guy said it is house ground. In NJ you have have a 2 foot copper spike in the ground to ground your house. So now since everything is daisy chained in your equipment through all your HDMI cables the surge goes through the ground connections. The alarm guy says he has seen this before.So there really is nothing that can protect your stuff from a lightening strike at least in NJ. Finally the surge protectors are meant to protect your equipment from the power company surges which is minuscule compared to the power of a lightening strike.
So in the summer I follow the weather and unplug all plugs and disconnect the FIOS box HDMI connection to the Processor because the FIOS box is connected to the house ground.from the cable line and the power surge goes through the cable line.