Anyone using a surge suppressor on their washing machines?

I wouldn't have used the word before, but now I think that's just what you're doing. Spinning. You didn't answer my questions.

"Do you disagree that the risk with underground is lower? If yes, then why do you say it doesn't matter which it is?"

I'm going to assume you know that one story about one house, or even

100 houses, does not make a risk as great when there are many 1000's of houses with overhead wires whose contents are damaged by lightning. So it does matter whether your service is overhead or underground.

Don't complain when politicians give you doubletalk. You do the same.

I don't care. That's not what I posted about or what I thought you would address if you answered.

Reply to
Micky
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Does it use a surge supressor? Do you need the new high efficiency detergent?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

ightning strike without damage were routine. In one venue, all wires were underground. Since single point earthing was missing, all computers in the block house (on surge protectors) were damaged. That strike to earth was a direct strike to underground wires.

You sure have said that and far worse over the years.

e. To protect from a type of surge that typically causes no damage; a tran sient >made irrelevant by robust protection inside every appliance.

And so it begins. Again what you're saying is contradictory to what the electrical engineer experts in surge protection that wrote both the NIST and IEEE guides clearly say in those guides. Readers are encouraged to read them. They show plug-in type surge protectors being used. Which would of course make no sense if they are irrelevant by "robust" protection inside every appliance. Open up those appliances and you'll find small MOVs. Look inside a decent plug-in and you'll find ones that are many times larger. And notice who provided the links to those guides and who does not.

Reply to
trader_4

g clocks, RCD, furnace, recharging phones, and the most critical item durin g a surge - smoke detectors. Nothing adjacent to an appliance claims to pr otect from destructive surges. Protection means a surge is connected to ea rth BEFORE it enters a building. No way around that well proven science.

ges (lightning and other sources) remains.

Interesting that you picked up on that does not matter point too.

ing. Every wire in every incoming cable must connect to single point earth ground BEFORE entering. Otherwise a surge is inside hunting for earth des tructively via appliances. Earth ground (not a protector) is the most crit ical component in every protection 'system'.

hot wire to neutral or safety ground wires. Now that surge has even more p aths to find earth ground destructively via a washer or other nearby applia nce. Adjacent protectors can even make damage easier if a 'whole house' so lution is not implemented.

All AC appliances that have electronics in them should have and almost certainly would have it. So, you'd find them in a new toaster with digital controls, but not in one with no electronics.

A related question that W Tom has never been able to answer is how these small MOVs inside an appliance are all peachy keen, robust, effective, etc, yet a plug-in that's placed right before it with much larger MOVs and operating with the same limitations, can actually cause destruction.

Reply to
trader_4

even enter a house from underground conductors or geology. He heard the ar c of lightning current passing through his house. Ten second later, he hea rd the sound from that lightning entering earth some two miles distant.

Welcome to W Toms world. Been there, done that. You posed a simple, dire ct question that goes to the heart of the issue, instead of answering it, he s pins and diverts. Of course your analysis is correct. The scenario with overhe ad service conductors, power lines overhead down the street, provides a scenar io where damaging surges with more energy can arrive at the panel than the sce nario with them underground.

. That current enters on overhead or underground conductors - wires or pip es. A nearby struck tree can be a surge current connected directly into ho usehold applies - if a properly earthed 'whole house' solution is not imple mented.

Welcome to W Toms world. It's like trying to have a conversation with a bowl of jello.

Reply to
trader_4

Tom is very effective in selling his Polyphaser and he dismisses point of use protectors because he doesn't have them to sell. My experience was built up over many years and thousands of customers in Florida who were not going to power off their computers, ATMs and cash registers every afternoon and unplug them. There is no single solution. Real protection involves many layers of protection. In some cases we went as far as to bond the cases of interconnected equipment together with fat wire because that is what it took to minimize those "interior transients" that Tom thinks are harmless. We also used ferrite beads on signal wires and other methods to mitigate transients that showed up on the load side of the service entrance.

When lightning hit the lightning rod above my weather station, it completely bypassed anything on the service entrance ... but my PC and the station survived.

Reply to
gfretwell

That was our experience. In places with very long data lines, we actually bonded the cases of the machines together with a large wire that was significantly shorter than the signal wire. You can use ferrite beads to essentially "lengthen" the signal wire but we also looped up some extra data cable through the ferrite. That stopped the problem of losing POS terminals in pool bars every time it rained.

"Ground" is a misnomer anyway. We have documented several volts difference between the electrode systems of buildings that were less than 100' apart. That causes it's own problems. You also have the problem that in why distribution, the PoCo is using earth as a parallel return path to that little neutral wire they have in the distribution system. There is a significant amount of current in those

8ga wires you see going down the pole from a transformer. There is no rod at the end of that wire. it is just tacked to the bottom of the pole before they set it. There is almost 3 amps on this one. (on the single phase distribution line)
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This one is where the 3 phases of the distribution split out. (less than an amp)

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Reply to
gfretwell

On "inverter" microwaves you have a lot more to be damaged.

Reply to
clare

The surges a plug in surge protector protects from are not the ones that do instant catastrophical damage, but the ones that to damage a little bit at a time - causing things like hard drive failures and accellerated aging of components.

Reply to
clare

Stormy's just being a smart-ass again because the subject is washing machines and someone DARED mention computers.

Well, the REAL subject is surge protectors - so we are covered

Reply to
clare

The QO Surgebreaker designed for and supplied by Square D for the QO panel is just over $100 Canadian, so likely about $50 street price in the USA. Add the cost of a good ground.if you do not already have it.

Reply to
clare

The problem is that the "clock" (and that circuit board) is on all the time. The actual cooking part is only on if you are cooking. The ones that use relays are very well isolated when it is "off". The same will be true of the new washing machines that started this thread. That $400 circuit board is always on.

Reply to
gfretwell

Plug-in protectors do not work primarily by earthing a surge.

The IEEE surge guide (link in trader's post) explains (starting page 30) plug in protectors work by limiting the voltage from each wire (power and signal) to the ground at the protector. The voltage between the wires going to the protected equipment is safe for the protected equipment.

Since protection is by limiting the voltage between wires, all interconnected equipment needs to be connected to the same protector and all external connections, like coax, must go through the protector.

Suppose you have a house earthed with a ground rod having near miraculous 10 ohms resistance to earth (and ignoring the impedance of te connecting wire), and a 1,000A surge is earthed. The building "ground" system will rise 10,000A above 'absolute' earth potential. In general

70% of the voltage drop away from a ground rod is in the first 3 feet. The earth over 3 feet away will be at least 7,000V from the building 'ground' system.

Much of the protection is that all wiring - power, phone, cable, ... - rises together. That requires a short ground wire from phone and other entry protectors to a common connection point on the power earthing system. (An example of a ground wire that is too long is in the IEEE surge guide starting page 30.)

A surge expert at the NIST has written "the impedance of the grounding system to `true earth' is far less important than the integrity of the bonding of the various parts of the grounding system."

Reply to
bud--

About $1 per protected appliance.

Solution does not use products with obscene profit margins from APC, Belkin , Tripplite, Panamax, Monster or Bud. An effective system would feature pr otectors from other companies with integrity such as Intermatic, Square D, Ditek, Siemens, Polyphaser (an industry benchmark), Syscom, Leviton, ABB, D elta, Erico, General Electric, and Cutler-Hammer. It should be rated at le ast 50,000 amps. These are available in any electrical supply house, and i n both Lowes and Home Depot.

Protector at 50,000 amps defines system reliability (life expectancy) 'over many' surges.

More important is its single point earth ground - the item that harmlessly absorbs hundreds of thousands of joules. Earthing the art of protection an d should have most of your protection. Earthing defines protection during 'each' surge.

Reply to
westom

BTW, you should also inspect the protection installed for free by the telco, cable company, and satellite dish. Dish installers are particularly bad. And inspect your 'primary' protection layer as detailed elsewhere.

Reply to
westom

Pretty much internet garbage.

For instance (contrary to the link) if a MOV with a 1000J rating is hit with 1000 - 1J hits, the cumulative rating is far greater than 1000J. Look up a data sheet.

And the amount of energy that can make it to a plug-in protector over a branch circuit is surprisingly low. A surge expert at the NIST investigated how much energy can reach the MOVs. Branch circuits were

10m and longer, and surges coming in on power wires were up to 10,000A. The maximum energy was a surprisingly small 35 joules. In 13 of 15 cases it was 1 joule or less. Plug-in protectors with much higher ratings are readily available. (There are a couple reasons the energy is so low, if anyone is interested.)

(The surge of 10,000A is, for practical purposes, the maximum surge exposure for a house. It is the result of a 100,000A lightning strike (only 5% are stronger) to an adjacent utility pole in typical urban overhead distribution.)

And the IEEE surge guide (link in trader's post) describes how the protected load can be connected to the incoming power, or connected across the MOVs. In the latter case, if the MOVs fail the protected equipment is disconnected. I believe protectors made now are required to state if the protected load is not disconnected.

Some manufacturers have protected equipment warranties. They are possible because the risk is much more limited than we expect (as explained above).

I don't expect any of my plug-in protectors, which have good ratings, to fail.

Reply to
bud--

A surge expert at the NISThas written "in fact, the major cause of [surge protector] failures is a temporary overvoltage, rather than an unusually large surge." An example of overvoltage is crossed power wires (as above). While MOVs can handle thousands of surge amps for the maybe hundred microsecond duration of a surge they are rapidly burned out by much longer lasting "overvoltage".

Reply to
bud--

Someone says "surge" and, like magic, the village idiot appears.

Westom googles for "surge". He has joined an astonishing number of forums to spread his misinformation.

Nonsense.

For proven science read the IEEE and NIST surge guides (links in trader's post).

Both the IEEE and NIST surge guides say plug-in protectors are effective.

It is westom's religious belief - immune from challenge. Since plug-in protectors are not well earthed westom can not figure out how they work. It is clearly explained in the IEEE surge guide, starting page 30 (and summarized in another post)

Service panel protectors are a real good idea. But from the NIST surge guide: "Q - Will a surge protector installed at the service entrance be sufficient for the whole house? A - There are two answers to than question: Yes for one-link appliances [electronic equipment], No for two-link appliances [equipment connected to power AND phone or cable or....]. Since most homes today have some kind of two-link appliances, the prudent answer to the question would be NO - but that does not mean that a surge protector installed at the service entrance is useless."

Service panel protectors do not by themselves prevent high voltages from developing between power and phone/cable/... wires. The NIST surge guide suggests most equipment damage is from high voltage between power and signal wires.

May have some or none. Never as much as a plug-in protector.

Of course not. Protection is not by "blocking" or "absorbing". If westom could only think he could find out how protection works.

Reply to
bud--

And where does it shunt those spike to? If not connected low impedance (ie less than 10 feet) to single point earth ground, then it must shunt those spikes elsewhere - such as destructively through adjacent electronics.

Protection is always about where energy dissipates. If a protector is adja cent to an appliance, it can only protect by 'blocking' or 'absorbing' that energy. How does its 2 cm part 'block' what three kilometers of sky could not? It doesn't. How does its hundreds of joules absorb surges that can be hundreds of thousands of joules? It doesn't. And does not have to. A surge too tiny to destroy appliances can also destroy near zero plug-in pro tectors. Then the naive consumer uses wild speculation to assume, "My prot ector sacrificed itself to save my computer."

More robust protection already inside appliances protect those appliances. Near zero joule protectors fail to even promote more sales.

A properly earthed 'whole house' protector does not 'block' or 'absorb' any thing. It connects hundreds of thousands of joules harmlessly to what does all protection - single point earth ground. Then even near zero plug-in p rotectors are protected. Then near zero plug-in protectors can protect fro m other and tinier anomalies.

Plug-in protectors are only useful if used in conjunction with properly ear thed 'whole house' protection. Protection is always about where hundreds o f thousands of joules are harmlessly absorbed. Any solution that does not discuss that energy is best considered a scam.

MOVs are effective when connected low impedance (ie less than 10 feet) to w hat actually does protection - single point earth ground.

Reply to
westom

How does it do stain protection?

Reply to
westom

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