Just a reminder - make sure you have surge protectors on all your electronic gadgets! If you study what you have, you may find you have more gadgets with electronic components than you think. These can range from the obvious TV and computer to the less obvious lawn watering system, soft water equipment, dishwasher, coffee pot.

Also...if you have had a surge protector on something for several years it may not work as a protector any more. So, ah, error on the safe side.

May God bless you all!!! And I really hope this is a 1 - 3 and not a 7 - 10.

-- nothing (better@to.do), December 14, 1999

Answers

Surge protectors are good to have (not the $5 cheapies) but they will do nothing to save your appliances against damage due to voltage sags which cause the amperage to rise which will damage quite a few things.

IF I was on the grid I would physically unplug things before midnight GMT (luckily I'm not though).

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), December 14, 1999.

Rather than a surge protector, you really want a UPS... Un-interrupted Power Supply.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 14, 1999.

Grid? You have a grid?

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), December 14, 1999.

What is available for refrigerators. I was reading the regular surge protector info and it is only for small appliances.

-- Sheri (wncy2k@nccn.net), December 14, 1999.

Tripp Lite Isobar surge protectors are used by the national labs to protect small (PC, workstation) computer equipment. Get a 6-outlet model per station.

UPSs typically have built in surge protectors.

Line conditioners are needed by generators for computer equipment (at a minimum). Line conditioners add or subtract irregular voltage levels. A breakdown of a typical computer (one of mine) is as follows:

P-100 PC ~500 mA HP OfficeJet LX ~300 mA Sony 20" trinitron ~500 mA ------- ~1.3 A

(measured by a Fluke DVM in series).

Take your total load, add a fudge factor, divide by 2, and get a couple of line conditioners.

A "Smart" UPS has a built-in line conditioner. These are higher end units. They can break (One, an APC Back-UPS, totally died on me after I took it out of the box from 2 years of storage).

So it is good to get a variety of solutions for added reliability and flexibility.

I think these items are more than justified under the category of "emergency communications", Y2k or not.

-z

-- Zygote (zygote1@zygote1.zygote1), December 15, 1999.