On this episode of “Simplifying Life Through Technology,” Mark and Andrew from SoundVision sit down to discuss surge protection and lightning strikes.
Ever wondered how your vacuum cleaner or hairdryer could be a potential threat to your high-end electronics? Join Mark and Andrew from SoundVision, as they shed light on this often overlooked yet crucial aspect - surge protection and lightning strikes. From explaining the relationship between everyday appliances and surges, to the correlation between surges and lightning strikes, they unravel it all. Be prepared to dispel misconceptions and embrace a tech revolution as they delve into the past, present, and future of protecting our electronics.
Together, they explore the various ways you can protect your home and electronic devices from potential lightning strikes and surges; they also discuss the potential fallout of not having protection in place. Navigating the aftermath of a lightning strike or surge can be a daunting task - especially when dealing with insurance. But fret not, they've got you covered. As a bonus, they extend an invitation to you to learn more about surge and lightning protection. Contact us for more information. We're here to help you stay plugged in safely!
We Discuss:
When lightning season is
What are surges
What is surge protection
SoundVision's approach to surge protection
What to do before filing an insurance claim for lightning damage
Hey, it's Andrew joining me today in the podcast room. We have our chief executive officer, mark to Petro, here to discuss lightning strikes. Welcome to simplifying life through technology good morning or afternoon, Andrew.
Speaker 2:
What are we at right now?
Speaker 1:
I see we're mid-morning. We're heading towards the afternoon.
Speaker 2:
Morning Talk about heading towards. We are heading into lightning season around here. That's right, summers coming, summers coming, which means that we have those storms and those storms tend to bring lightning That usually runs, i think, in our area from around now to kind of early fall. Reason that's important is that lightning and surge in general is Is not good for the electronics that we install, and so we were talking internally about having a show that kind of talked About surges and what do we do to prevent those in the equipment that we install right.
Speaker 1:
So surge protection what is it and why is it valuable to customers?
Speaker 2:
Surge protection. Sometimes it gets a bit of a misnomer. There's people talk about lightning, and lightning is a catastrophic surge. But surge protection in general is equipment that protects other equipment From common surges that happen in the home every day that maybe people don't think about. So an example a vacuum cleaner. Pretty much everybody's used a vacuum cleaner and when you turn on a vacuum cleaner One of the things you know is that it's got a little spinner at the bottom right and that thing has to spin up to speed real quickly. So there's a term called inrush current. I don't want to get too technical in here, but essentially in English that just means there's a big surge of current that comes in To the vacuum cleaner to make that bar spin real quickly. Same same thing happens with your hairdryer. You turn your hairdryer on and you know real quick right.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, i've had many Outlets burst because of a hairdryer.
Speaker 2:
That's a surge so that Surge of current is needed to get that particular appliance to work as it's normally intended. Electronics work on really small amounts of current.
Speaker 2:
Most of the stuff that we install things like networks, things like Audio video components, apple TVs and audio video receivers and that kind of thing- So pretty basic stuff that a lot of people would have in their homes pretty much things that every one of our customers have in their homes, okay, or customers that have automation systems, or just larger audio video systems, even smaller audio video systems, mm-hmm, and that amount of current coming into the audio video equipment can be catastrophic. So we, as part of our Normal installation, and specifically our normal design process, is to install What's called surge protectors, and that's really what those protectors are designed to do. That allows your equipment to stay at its optimal operating Condition for a longer period of time, and so it increases the longevity of your equipment and it keeps the performance of that equipment consistent.
Speaker 1:
So you talked about how surges happen with a hairdryer or, say, like a phone charger all the way up to a TV. Do you need a larger surge protection with the more products you have in your home? Is that a thing A?
Speaker 2:
good question. It leads into a couple of things Again, just trying to keep it high level here. but the surge protection is actually designed for the equipment that it's protecting, not necessarily the surge that's coming into it.
Speaker 1:
So each equipment.
Speaker 2:
So, like if we have an equipment rack which is very common we'll actually protect the entire rack, every piece of equipment that's in there, and there's a term called the bubble of protection. So if you imagine, if you just draw a circle around the equipment, any wire that's coming into that equipment, into that circle needs to be protected. It's not just the AC outlet that you're plugging into the wall. It could be a coaxial cable that they're coming from or going to a television, it could be audio video cables, it could be speaker cables, anything like that. So we do our best to protect as much of that as possible. Now I started the whole thing with lightning. Lightning is a surge yes, it's a catastrophic surge, and so there are different things that we can do to mitigate the effect and damage that lightning can cause.
Speaker 2:
But there's no 100% guarantee right, because it is mother nature, the 100% guarantee is probably what our parents did many years ago, when you would go on vacation, you'd run around and you'd unplug everything. Yeah, remember that.
Speaker 1:
Oh yes, my grandma Yeah that's why you unplugged everything.
Speaker 2:
That's the 100%, unless the lightning literally comes in the house and strikes the thing. Okay, if it's not connected to anything, then that actually It's nothing for it to affect. Unfortunately, in today's world, the connected world, right to be connected, that's almost like out of the realm of possibility. now.
Speaker 1:
Right, because there's so many electronics that we just use on a daily basis, whether we're home or not.
Speaker 2:
So that's really changed kind of the landscape of how things work. So we do have products that are designed to take a lot more voltage, up to like 6,000 volts. I mean lightning strikes can be extremely strong And, you're right, a direct lightning strike. There is no 100% guarantee, right, but we do design to mitigate as much as possible. We've had situations where we've learned in the past. We've had some customers many, many years ago and we're still learning this, i mean 15, 20 years ago that we designed very large systems and did not use the proper surge protection And we've had catastrophic issues where lightning strikes have taken out sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff.
Speaker 2:
Wow, hard to believe. Yeah, that is, you know, the other thing that happens too, and this is a good thing to remember for customers If you actually know that there was a lightning strike, you can see it, or maybe certain things have stopped working or blown up or whatever. Right, one of the things also to keep in mind, especially if you go to your insurance, because a lot of people go to homeowner's insurance and they make a claim for the equipment that was damaged, and that's a whole other thing too, but what they don't take into account is the lingering effects. So sometimes, obviously, if something doesn't work, it's been damaged.
Speaker 2:
But, sometimes that will take a while. Remember, i said earlier that we install these surge protectors so that components can have their longevity extended and their performance consistent. Well, without that surge protection, whether it's a refrigerator or whether it's a television, for example, it may not actually fail for weeks or even a couple months. Really, yeah. So it can damage components to the point that they're passable. They work, but they're just on the edge.
Speaker 1:
It's like a slow fade out until it dies.
Speaker 2:
It's like a slow fade out And then one of those small surges. All of a sudden one day you turn on your hairdryer and the TV doesn't work anymore And you go. What the heck happened? So you do. If you have that situation where there is in fact a lightning strike and you do have to make a claim, you want to make sure to kind of test everything you can to the best of your ability, because if you go to your insurance and they honor the claim once you sign off, they're done. So anything after that's on you're done, anything you didn't notice to check on That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:
So we really intended for this to be a high level just overview of surge and lightning in general. There's a lot of specifics to it. If anybody is interested in getting more information, you can absolutely contact us. We can go over the specifics with you And if we have listeners that are interested in hearing more about it technically, let us know. drop us a note and we'll put together either a podcast or maybe even a video to kind of show some of the things that we use, some of the damages that we've seen, that kind of thing if it's interest to our listeners.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that'll be a great idea.
Speaker 2:
Cool thanks, andrew.
Speaker 1:
["Sounds of the World"]. Thank you for joining us. You can learn more about SoundVision at soundvisionlakenormancom. You can follow us on Twitter at soundvisionlkn. Find us on Instagram and Facebook at soundvisionllc.