On 10/10/06 16:28, Felix Miata wrote:
On 06/10/10 17:48 (GMT-0400) Darryl Gregorash apparently typed:
howstuffworks.com hints that one might also want to put a surge-only unit in front of the UPS itself. If you have a combination surge/UPS unit that gives adequate protection, it might fail as it protects your electronics, leaving you with some expensive, but useless, dead weight. This also gives you the option of plugging non-essential equipment into something other than the UPS itself, while still protecting all your equipment.
All the UPS units I've purchased and read the instructions to over the past couple of years have stated that the unit is to be plugged directly into a normal household outlet, not into any type of surge protector. All have provided two types of outlets, surge protect only, and surge protect on backup power. I've only bought one of less than 900VA in recent years. I didn't read that 350 VA's instructions, but it's already history anyway.
I don't know that there is any reason for such a recommendation, other than they want you to have to buy another of their units if the surge protection gets blown away during a storm.
BTW, I live in the lightning capital of the world, central FL, and haven't yet needed to take up any UPS manufacturer on its included connected equipment protection warranty.
I once had a close encounter with a lightning strike, in the days before I gave such things much thought. Nothing died, but my monitor displayed a very nice set of Lissajous figures for about 5 seconds. Then the power went out. The monitor, which was about 3 years old at the time, died about 8 months later, probably a premature death due to stresses it suffered as a result of the lightning. I'm mostly speculating, but this is probably typical of what anyone can expect to encounter: no immediate signs of problems, but equipment starts to die prematurely a few months later, for no apparent cause. The very large surges that will destroy equipment immediately are likely very rarely as a result of lightning. More probably, they will occur during the massive surges that bring down half the grid when some local power company's fault protection fails. If a surge is large enough to start tripping relays at the power company, then you've got a very big problem indeed.