Brisbane
do you all unplug your pins in an electrical storm and what could happen if i dont?
(Topic ID: 5057)
Norwood, OH
Worst case is your house takes a direct hit and it fries all the electronics in your entire house not just your pin. More likely you'll get a close hit that causes surging through the lines with the risk being some possible damage to chips, diodes, transistors etc.. Best to just unplug them.
Yes. Lightning can do weird things. Some stuff can fry and other stuff can be fine. I play it safe and unplug them along with my other electronics stuff.
Surge protectors and power strips do absolutely no good for lightning strikes. For small surges during normal operations, they work. If you are depending on them for protection from lightning strikes, good luck. Your best bet is to unplug stuff you care about during storms.
You wouldn't believe how people consider strikes and surges as interchangeable. We have a Frankenstein on location at the local rec center and it has a huge pool not far from the snack bar/game room. We've seen countless games failing in numerous ways due to lightning strikes/surges because of that pool. It acts as a lightning magnet when a storm comes through. Not to mention the fact that flyback tranformers in older CRT monitors are very susceptible to power surges. We had to replace a monitor just a couple of months ago. It was quite funny seeing the words "Game Over" burned into the screen (it was a Galaga).
11 months later
We just had a an electrical storm that did damage to some of my pins. The power went out and came right back on around 6am. Later I found that several of my circuit breakers had been tripped. It's not really practical for me to unplug all of my games when I am not playing and only half of them were on power strips. I had never had trouble before, but this time I found that 2 of my games (not on strips) wouldn't switch on. A little digging and I found that the varistors and main line fuses on those two were literally blown to pieces. Fortunately, $10 at radio shack and 1/2 hr repair and they were back up and running. Would a power strip really have prevented this? I am finding a lot of different opinions.
My wife was laughing at me last week when we had a huge thunderstorm pass thru. I ran inside and unplugged all my games and was trying to explain that a lightning strike bridges the gap in a surge protector and can still cause problems. Plus, it only takes a second, so better safe than sorry, right?
I have three layers of protection:
1). Power strips for all machines for when I am playing
2). All outlets (thus power strips) on their own circuit breaker, thus when I am finished playing I just turn off the outlets at the circuit breaker box
3). The home I live in is, in itself, surge protected
Since I live in Florida, and we do indeed get some impressive lightning, I do not want to risk anything.
I have had electronic still fry with surge protectors. Cheap surge protectors have a lower Joules rating and therefore cant take a big hit. The best line of defense is to get a surge protector installed on your electrical panel.
Quoted from exflexer:I have had electronic still fry with surge protectors. Cheap surge protectors have a lower Joules rating and therefore cant take a big hit. The best line of defense is to get a surge protector installed on your electrical panel.
Yep! This is what I did when I had my home re-wired (surge protect the entire house).
Quoted from TaylorVA:All my pins are on wall switches. Would I still need to unplug them?
Yes, it is best to unplug. Lightning is such a high voltage that it can jump/spread on ground wires while looking for a place to dissipate, and your whole house electrical system and probably your copper water pipes are tied together to the main breaker panel.
I used to do some electrical building design and also worked as an EE for a power company and have heard some crazy stories about damage caused to phone and electrical systems from lightning strikes.
I have not kept up to date on surge suppressing systems in the last 10 years, but most are not worth much against a lightning hit that is nearby. The heavy duty commercial systems also cost several hundreds or thousands of dollars and even then they are likely not going to stop a direct lightning strike .
Here are some examples of heavy duty surge suppressors:
http://www.advancedpowr.com/index.cfm?page=products_listing&categoryid=141
Whether the game is on or not makes no difference.
I unplug them. TVs, Computers, everything. Wasn't an issue in Anchorage as we rarely got thunderstorms. Here in Kansas, well, it seems we rarely even get rain. 
To be safe, unplug. Msot surge protectors have a MOV capacitor. It designed to fry and prevent the extra voltage from reaching equipment. It works well in most cases, but a direct lightning stirke it wont protect 100%. In many cases the MOV does not blow in enough time to protect from the massive power strike that lightining injects into the lines. Plus lightning does some funny things, tracing back up grounds, cable, and etc....
There are whole home surge protectors that do a better job, but in my experience nothing is 100%. When in doubt unplug.
Using a good surge suppressor to protect your pins under normal operation? Yes.
Relying on a surge suppressor to protect your pins from a lightning strike? No.
First thing I think about if my house is hit directly by lightning? Not pins.
viperrwk
My entire gameroom has its own circuit breaker box - If I flip the breakers off is this enough to protect them?
Its a pain in the ass climbing under twelve games every time you think its going to lightening here which could be every other day in the NE during summer.
Quoted from fusion301:My entire gameroom has its own circuit breaker box - If I flip the breakers off is this enough to protect them?
Its a pain in the ass climbing under twelve games every time you think its going to lightening here which could be every other day in the NE during summer.
It is still not enough to turn off the breaker box. It is the ground wire that is going to transfer the lightning's energy to your games in the event of a direct lightning strike. The grounds of the breaker box are literally connected to the ground outside with cables and metal ground rods. The grounds are connected to the breaker box even when you shut off or pull out the main breaker. When the lightning hits, the voltage spreads around the ground and can jump onto those ground rods and go into your breaker box and home wiring.
It would probably be easier to unplug the machines if you get some of those power strips that let you plug in about 4 to 6 games each so you could unplug the strips rather than each game.
Quoted from fusion301:Thanks DCFAN - I was hoping that wasnt the answer lol....
No problem, glad to help out.
I edited my post above to include:
It would probably be easier to unplug the machines if you get some of those power strips that let you plug in about 4 to 6 games each so you could unplug the strips rather than each game.
Quoted from jhanley:Can it cause problems if they are turned off?
Yes. I think most of the comments here are addressing the turned off but plugged in condition.
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