Re: East Coast Lighting Up Like 4th of July
Posted by Chris in Tampa on 8/22/2009, 7:22 pm
Fortunately our damage is not too bad. Probably around $1,500. Unfortunately, it is nowhere close to our deductible. It could have been so much worse. I have no idea how much the intercom system and doorbell would cost to fix because I'm not sure if the main part of the intercom system was the only thing damaged or if some or most of the intercoms in each room were damaged. We're not going to try to repair that any time soon. People can knock and we have portable radios. As for the computer, luckily I found out today that my hard drive was not damaged. I have it in another computer now and am slowly adding parts to it. The older computer is good enough to use into the future, so I will not replace it any time soon. A neighbor luckily didn't need some computers any more and I have been combining parts from them and various old computer parts I have.

We have some strips with cable protection that are fairly cheap. We probably should have used them anyway. I looked around today for what the cable company was talking about. Looking at all the home improvement stores and electronic stores, nobody had a clue what we were talking about. I started to think they didn't exist. Then I found out my grandfather (whose name ironically is Bill - yes I have made light of the connection when I talked to him), who used to work in some industry related, said he knew what the cable company was talking about. After looking online, I finally found something that looks and sounds like what the cable company was talking about, but I have not done any research on it yet:

http://www.surgeassure.com/product.aspx?prod=SAVFFF

This and then the ordinary strips would probably be a good idea. I saw some of the larger options for single point protection, but we have various electronics throughout the house and we would need several to really protect things well. I'm going to research the thing the cable company was talking about, which might be what is at the link above. Need to see how reliable some of these places are. I wanted to buy it at a major store. I'm going to add something about it in our neighborhood newsletter when I find out more. I might even suggest the local news investigate ways to protect your cable. I don't think enough people really protect against it. Like if you have a cable modem, do you have it going through at least one of the strip surge protectors that help protect cable? If not, then the ethernet cable could get a surge and carry it to your computer and kill it even if the electrical surge protector works on your modem and computer. And it still might not be enough, or you might need too many, and might therefore need something upstream when the cable comes into your house.
31
In this thread:
East Coast Lighting Up Like 4th of July - Cape_Fear_NC, 8/21/2009, 6:44 pm
< Return to the front page of the: message board | monthly archive this page is in
Post A Reply
This thread has been archived and can no longer receive replies.