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The Daring Dufas[_8_]

On 12/25/2013 4:23 PM, wrote:
I guess I'm either too lazy to go to the trouble to design a suitable
protection circuit, or too cheap to consider spending some money, or,
probably both. I just hate the way everything is thrown away because
there is something that maybe is better available.

I fix old "Italian style" Christmas tree light strings, adding a
couple of sockets and bulbs to 50 light sets to convert them to 52
light sets. The 4% drop in voltage doesn't dim the lights
noticeably, and they don't burn out nearly as fast. Then I donate
them to Goodwill, along with severaL spare bulbs for each set in a
paper bag attached to the set. Easy to do if you understand about
hot and neutral 120V circuits and use a handitester to follow the hot
lead to wherever there is a break. What can be confusing is where a
bulb is burned out, but the little shorting stub wound around the
filament supports fails to close/burn through sufficiently to short
out the lamp, but closes enough that the capacitance allows some 120V
to leak thru, just enough that the handitester responds, but with a
noticeably weaker response than full on or full off. Those defects
can take twice as long to find and fix. Good to do on a rainy or
snowy January day.

When I was helping my late friend GB do residential HVAC work. Many
customers in rural areas were having capacitors and circuit boards blown
out in their HVAC systems here in Alabamastan. I got him to start
installing hard wired surge arresters on the condensing unit and air
handler to protect them, especially the very expensive control boards
in the heat pumps. The new super duper high efficiency systems that used
no more power than a night light were very expensive to repair when a
power surge hit them. 5 years after I started installing hard wired
surge arresters on residential HVAC systems, the hard wired surge
arresters showed up in all the HVAC and refrigeration supply houses in
the area. Before that, I had been installing them for many years on
commercial systems and got them at electrical supply houses. Me and GB
never had to replace another blown capacitor or circuit board for a
rural customer who had us install the surge arresters. I know guys who
will say, "I don't want to install protection, I want lighting to damage
things so I can make more money fixing them." Of course when it hits a
large area, many systems go down and the fellow can't get to them then
the customer calls someone else and may never call him back again. ^_^

TDD