"BobK207" wrote in message
...


After some time away..............came home to:

two TV's
two DVD / VCR combos
wireless router
garage door opener
forced air furnace
GFI in garage tripped & will not reset
some wall repectales & lighting circuits not working
(but no breakers tripped and power ok on both hot legs)

all items were non-functional, non- responsive, no power up

cable company had called & said their cable equipment in the vicinity
of our house was "blown"

I pulled the panel cover & tightened all wire clamps on the breakers
and the screws on the neutral bus....found a couple slightly loose.
All circuits returned to working order.

furnace 24v transformer bad...replaced it and furnace now working
bought new router before I checked to see if old router failure was
just power supply, it was

no lightning storms while away

any ideas as to cause of destruction of all these electronic items?

voltage surge? cause of said surge?



My first thought would be lightning which didn't necessarily have to hit
your house directly to do damage. It could have hit a pole down the street.
You could also have a neutral conductor problem. The neutral connection
should be checked at the main panel, the meter, the service head and at the
pole and transformer. You should also make sure that your water pipe ground
connection is clean and tight. Also check to make sure that the wire to
your ground rod is not broken. If you don't have a ground rod, then have two
installed.

I had a customer call me a few years ago about a recurring problem with
lightning. TV's, VCR's, and the garage door openers had all been hit at one
time or another. I went and had a look. The house was only about two years
old. It had a well with a plastic water line into the basement and the
original installer had put in a grounding conductor and clamp right where it
changed over to copper. I looked outside and there was one ground rod with
a loose clamp and the wire was not installed correctly. In essence they had
no effective ground path to earth. I installed two new ground rods and they
never had any more problems with lightning.