[rescue] WTB/Advice: UPSs

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, April 5, 2002 at 16:09:37 (-0500), Joshua D Boyd wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] WTB/Advice: UPSs
>
> I have yet to come across a reasonably priced Smart-UPS locally.

sometimes all the good used gear goes to a local recycler who rips it
apart without regard to its value as a whole functional unit....

> Same here, although I don't relish the idea of arguing over why my home office
> has such an array of business grade gear.

Been there -- done that.  I'll never buy anything from Allstate again.
(even though after arguing for months with the adjuster and initiating a
letter writing campaign to head office I finally got everything replaced)

I made double sure my current insurance agent (not broker) knows exactly
what I have and why and I got assurances in writing that it would be
fully insured at replacement cost.  (I need to update that list though!)

> I have a lightning arrestor on the phone line coming into the house, but I 
> don't really know much about how good it is (it came with the house).  I
> have a second arrestor.  Would there be any benifit to putting them in 
> series?  The house once had a lot of phone lines.  They were removed before
> we moved in.  We then had two phone lines installed, but removed one when we
> got DSL.

Having been through, and cleaned up after, three direct lighting hits (on
the transformer pole), I'd say the more protection you have everywhere
the better.  You just never can tell when the potential of a spike is
going to be big enough to jump something, and many spike protectors can
only barely manage the spikes caused by other equipment (motors,
welders, etc.), never mind what lightning can deliver.

During the first strike (which was when I was in high school back in
Sask. where I grew up), I happened to be looking out the livingroom
picture window when the lighting hit the transformer pole in the yard.
It vapourised the conductor rod inside the feed insulator on top of the
xformer, blowing bits of ceramic as much as 500 yards away around the
yard and into the pasture, totally fried the backplane and bus-bars of
the circuit breaker boxes in the two houses, zapped the door sensor
switches in the microwave, blew out several traces on the back of the
PCB in my clock radio, and caused damage in several junction boxes
around the house.  Oddly the barn, shop, and well breakers were all
fine, as was everything else that was still plugged in in the houses
(the TV wasn't plugged in!).

In the second strike (here in Toronto at my former townhouse back in
1989) the pole transformer seemed to burn out before the spike got
anywhere damaging on the power circuits.  However the cable and
telephone lines also took the same hit on the same pole and managed to
partly fry my TV, my answering machine, my modems, the 3B2/400 and all
its peripherals, and even one of my DMD5620 terminals.

In the last strike (also to the same pole at that townhouse) the
lightning took out only one half of the 220V centre-tapped feeder
transformer.  By then the cable feeders had been completely replaced,
and the telephone line was also routed a different way.  Half the lights
in the appartment still glowed dimly until the power company came and
disonnected the high voltage in preparation to replacing the xformer.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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