[TIGER]

DOES THE A/C GO BACK ON AFTER A POWER OUTAGE OR DOES THE CIRCUIT BREAKER GET TURNED OFF WHEN THE POWER GOES OUT?

[villager99]

the circuit breaker to my a/c unit has never tripped in the 8 years i've live in tv but i suppose it could at at point. when i was a 6/6 snowbirder i had someone go into my house periodically to be sure things were going as planned. and full house surge protectors seem to be catching on with more folks. usually after losing some electrical device to lightening.

[JohnZ]

Your A/C should come back on after a power outage. Your breakers should not trip on an outage event. The breaker will trip only if the A/C unit starts to draw amps for some reason. Oh....and surge protectors will not provide protection in the event of a direct lightening strike.....in fact...nothing will. If devices are plugged in or hard wired to the main circuit during a strike....they're toast. Surge protectors will only provide protection from spikes in line volatage from the power provider (SECO).

[Frank2]

Yes, the A/C does restore following a power outage. It's happend at our home several times over the years and not once did the A/C fail.

As John Z states above, if/when the A/C draws excessive amperage that's when the circuit breaker will trip to the "off" position and require resetting.

It's a good practice to have someone check your home while you're away.

Good luck.

[Ice Cold]

:cop: Good idea to get a simple surge protector put on at the AC unit. No warranty covers a compressor that gets fried by lightning

[F16 1UB]

Originally Posted by Ice Cold

:cop: Good idea to get a simple surge protector put on at the AC unit. No warranty covers a compressor that gets fried by lightning

Our northern home has a "Whole House" protector that the electric company installs behind the electric meter. If it gets zapped by lightning there's an audible tone that the unit generates. At least that's what they told us. Cost was $196 and that was 7 years ago.

Steve

[JohnZ]

Surge protectors, even a whole-house unit, provides minimal protection from direct or very close lightning strikes. It's like spitting in a pond a watching for the water to rise. Whole-house surge protectors with a good maximum rating of say 20,000 volts is not going to provide protection from a millisecond strike of well over a million volts. The best protection is a well grounded lightning rod (better yet ...several) and even THAT is often defeated. And here's another thing.....if you've got printer/fax machine and it's plugged into a phone jack.....and that device is connected to your computer....a surge protector won't help you there if there's a direct lightning strike on a phone line. Same goes for coaxial cable to your TV or computer modem. Whole-house protectors do no good there. But since our utilities are underground......we've got reasonably good protection....so cross your fingers and hope. Again, the main (if not only) value of surge protectors is protection from common line voltage spikes from our power provider....not lightning....regardless of what the purveyors of surge protection equipment may tell you to sell their wares.

I once worked on a U.S. Corps of Engineers Supefund project in Old Forge, PA....on a cleared mountain top. Our weather station tower (for wind direction and velocity) that we relied on in case of a dangerous chemical vapor leak kept getting hit by lightning (once when I was on the tower replacing a PC board...interesting story there). After the loss of 3 computers, 2 gas chromatograph mass spec instruments ($100K), our engineering gear-heads tried ALL kinds of high-end surge protection and grounding cures. No success.....that electrical surge just liked to zip down the coax right to our base station.....millions of volts to the zap. We eventually fixed the problem by going to RF for data transfer and eliminated the cable entirely. I learned a lot about lightning on that project.

Bottom Line: If lightning zaps your phone, cable or power line....even with surge protection.....any plugged-in devices are gonna fry. No kidding. Your best bet...unplug.