just a test

test

Did you pass or fail?

Passed and with a UPS this time. Two routers in two months is too much to tolerate. APC per your and Otis's input.

Thanks.

Well no guarantees with lightning.

But if you like your surge suppressor, you can keep it. Period.

Bwahahahaha

One other idea occurred to me (I know, two ideas in a few days, it hardly seems possible), have you checked the polarity and ground of the outlets in your home? Instead of running out and hiring an electrician to figure it out for you maybe pick up one of these units first (assuming you don't already have one):



They run about $10-15 and just about any hardware store should have something like the one in the picture. If you don't accomplish anything else at least you'll know if any of your outlets have an open ground and/or reversed polarity. The other thing that occurs to me is that the ground connector in your breaker panel could be loose or corroded, maybe the answer is as simple as cleaning up the wire and the connector on the bus in the breaker box. I have been bitten enough times by 120 AC and even a couple of good zaps from some 240 AC circuits so I don't do any of my own work inside the breaker panel, I would hire an electrician to do that for me. My two cents worth would be to open the breaker panel then visually inspect the wiring - look but don't touch!

Good luck! I'll assume that if you can continue to post through all of the "terrible" weather we are supposed to have over the next couple of days that your router and new APC surge protector are up and running!

Cabin is 60~ yrs old. I would be afraid of what they would find. Are you saying that if I have a bad/opn ground or reversed polarity the surge protector will not be effective?

A bad or open ground could be what's killing your routers, reversed polarity isn't generally as big of an issue but depending on the over all condition of the circuit it can be a contributing factor. The beauty of using a ground fault/polarity tool is that you can check all of the outlets in your house and record the results for the time it takes to buy the tool, walk around the house and plug it in to every outlet, and the cost of the tool. You'll be out some of your personal time and $10-15 bucks, maybe a little more if you buy some sort of super deluxe model of a ground fault/polarity tool. A professional electrician is going to get a lot more cash to give you the same information.

Once you have checked your outlets you'll know which ones have issues. In my own home when I check outlets and find problems I shut off the power at the breaker box and then open the outlets at the wall. If the tool tells you that you have reversed polarity then the fix is as easy as moving the black and white wires on the outlet to opposite sides of the outlet. If the tool indicates you have an open ground then you'll want to make sure that the green or bare copper wire is firmly connected to the outlet. You may find that the person who wired a particular outlet didn't bother to connect the ground or that the ground connector on the outlet is broken or loose. You might get lucky and replace an outlet for a couple of bucks and find out that was the problem.

My place was built in 1969 and there is plenty of evidence of amateur electrical, plumbing, and carpentry all over the place. To top it off my home features wiring produced by Cadillac - ALUMINUM WIRING! I have spent several years splicing and re-splicing connections between copper and aluminum wires and I generally suspect the wall switches and outlets first when something stops working and most of the time that turns out to be the fix. If you have aluminum wiring don't fret, just do a few Google searches on purple wire nuts and dielectric grease; the wire nuts are crazy expensive, I use the grease and standard wire nuts.

Regardless, if it was me I'd go buy the ground fault/polarity tool and check out your outlets before I did anything else. You might find out that there are some bad outlets in your house and you can move your router around to one that is set up correctly. You might also find out that your wiring is really hosed up and determine that it's worth having to occasionally replace router (double check the warranty - you might find a manufacturer who offers replacement even if it's obvious the box got fried) instead of hiring a professional electrician to fix the wiring in your house.

I wish you fair winds and following seas, looking forward to you posting what you've done in your next steps to resolve the issue. Fingers crossed that it turns out to be an easy fix!

You have talked me into it. I will get one.

We've got a 1990's house, but have lost a fax machine (it was part of a multifunction laser printer), cordless telephone base unit, DirecTV satellite TV box HDMI, and a pricey home theater receiver HDMI circuit (same strike as the DirecTV hit) due to lightning.

And we didn't lose them due to surges on the AC circuit (which was surge protected), we lost the fax and cordless telephone due to lightning surges on the telephone line. We lost the satellite box and receiver due to a lighting surge on the satellite box coax cable from the dish. So make sure you protect your telephone line and coax cable too (I didn't, I just protected the AC)! Many surge protectors offer protection for them, if you use it.

And just a week ago, we had a refigerator/freezer in the basement go out costing several hundreds of dollars in spoiled food. The GFCI socket got tripped after 8 months of no problems.

There was a lot of lightning around that time and I at first thought that damaged the refrigerator and tripped the GFCI, but after doing a lot of testing I found the refrigerator to be fine.

So after doing more research, it seems it might not be a good idea to plug a refrigerator into a GFCI socket. When the defroster goes on, that creates moisture in the frig, and moisture in the wrong place will trip a GFCI. When I did the wiring, I was told all kitchen sockets were required to be GFCI. But after reading more, I'm not so sure and a frig may be exempt from that requirement. I've already rewired that socket away from the GFCI, and I tested the upstairs frig AC socket and see it is also not connected to GFCI.

We have a whole house surge protector too, which I think is a good idea up here. But the light went out on it recently, which I've read means it's not effective anymore. I've looked to replace it, but it seems to of been discontinued.

So now I'm looking for a different whole house surge protector, and one that works for general lightning strikes too (not that anything will protect a direct strike). I found this one on Amazon which isn't too expensive, has good reviews and seems much easier to install than the one I had. But I don't have a clue if it would really be very effective. The reviews just mentioned a TV home show installed it in their homes.

www.amazon.com/WHOLE-LIGHTNING-PROTECTOR...ouse+surge+protector

Fun times in lightning country! And I agree you should get an AC socket tester. I think mine cost less than $10 and it can test the GFCI circuit too. The cheaper ones won't.

And don't get me into the arc fault circuit breakers which are more recently required by code. Those have caused me other problems with false trips.

BlazerBob wrote: Passed and with a UPS this time. Two routers in two months is too much to tolerate. APC per your and Otis's input.

Thanks.

Fail. With the UPS still lost another modem. I am sure you twiggets have arked and sparked across 117 before? Well, I was by a window and before it even registered as lightning I thought a wall outlet has spontaneously shorted out. Then there was a flash outside at ground level. I expected to go outside and see my splitter melted down. (In the light of day there is no sign of a strike that I find)

Since we had the UPS and the modem still had lights I assumed it was something else and called CenturyLink. They came out and replaced the Modem, no charge.???

Still have not gotten a tester as there is other stuff going on around here. I should call an electrician. Maybe. I am less motivated now that modems are free. I wonder how often they would do that.