I recently had installed a new hot air furnace, that also has an Evaporator section in it for the house air conditioning.
Last night, a thunder storm passed thru the area. Nothing really major; have certainly seen worse. A bit of lightning, etc.
Lights flickered for a few seconds. This is the first time since the new installation that we had this type of storm.
Anyway, the main circuit board in the furnace fried.
Surprisingly, nothing else in the house suffered any damage, whatsoever. Even the PC's still work. Of course most of the other items in the house are plugged into power extension strips with overvoltage and spike protection; perhaps this saved them ? Hard to know for sure, though.
The furnace (110 V) is, of course, hard wired to the house wiring via a dedicated circuit breaker.
My question is:
Would really hate to have it happen again.
Is there any kind of circuit breaker we can change to that has this spike and overvoltage protection ?
I would add a hefty surge suppressor (GOOGLE) right where the branch ckt enters the furnace.
The furnace mfr's have known about this flaw in the control boards for a decade or more. It represents a lucrative income stream for them (and for their service firms).
A protector does not stop, block, or absorb destructive surges. And yet lightning damage is routinely avoided; as Ben Franklin even demonstrated in 1752. He also did not stop, block, or absorb lightning as others even here suggest as a solution.
Every incoming wire must earth surges before that wire can enter the building. So simple, so effective, and so inexpensive that your telco installs such a protector, for free, where their wire connects to your building. Cable needs no protector. A properly installed cable first drops down to hardwire their ground block to your earth ground. Only then does the cable rise back up to enter the building.
In your case, lightning may have found earth ground, destructively, via a furnace. First lightning forms a complete path from cloud to earth. Only items in that path - that have both an incoming and an outgoing electrical connection - would be damaged. No, lightning is not capricious. It caused furnace damage for good, basic electrical reasons. Other appliances were not a better path.
Protectors are not protection. The single point earth ground is protection. Secondary protection is earth ground connected to AC electric box. That means your building's earth ground system must met and probably exceed post 1990 National Electrical Code (NEC).
To connect all three incoming AC electric wires to that earth ground, you require a 'whole house' protector such as are sold in Home Depot and Lowes. No effective protector has been observed in Sears Hardware, Kmart, Walmart, Office Depot, Radio Shack, Best Buy, Staples, or Circuit City. Effective protectors have names of more responsible electrical manufacturers such as Intermatic, Square D, GE, Siemens, Polyphaser, Leviton, and Cutler Hammer. Effective protectors make a short (less than 10 foot) connection to the single point earth ground. Ineffective protectors forget to discuss earthing.
Defined above is secondary protection. Also inspect your primary protection system:
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Currently ongoing is a discussion about protection and earthing in the rec.radio.shortwave newsgroup entitled "grounding and surge".
All appliances contain protection that would work on the power cord. Internal protection that can be overwhelmed if destructive transients are not earthed before entering a building. Shunt mode protectors that don't make a short connection to earth simply forget to mention which type of surges they protect from. They don't protect from typically destructive transients. Obviously. Where is the 'less than
10 foot' connection to earth? So instead they forget to discuss earth ground hoping you will instead use word association: "surge protector = surge protection". The assumption is false. Surge 'protection' is earth ground. Effective surge 'protector' makes an earth ground connection during the surge. But when a $3 power strip with some $0.10 components is sold for $15 or $50, why would they want you to know the facts - and endanger such high profits?
A protector is > I recently had installed a new hot air furnace, that also has an
Hi, Things like that has basic protection built in. My 5th wheel refrigerator and furnace have logic control board like house furnace. They have not suffered any damage caused by ligthtning. My house one, quit working when it was less than a week old which was replaced by warranty. Mind you I park my trailer everywhere during summer time. High up in the Rockies, down in the prairies...... Tony
A responsible post does not just suggest a solution. Post would say where that choke is located, why it is effective, and often includes numbers. Saying "A choke is sufficient" is typical of posts only from junk scientists; not acceptable from the technically informed.
No. Post might just respond to flat-seeming-truth post by unimaginative person who say all incoming lines must have path to earth for effective lightning protection (false false false.)
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