The utmost importance of surge diverters
If you a) use electrical goods in your home and b) want to protect your belongings, you need to know the importance of surge diverters. Without a surge diverter, you could unexpectedly fry your dearest electronic devices, such as your home computer, rendering it totally useless.
Why? Because power surges happen. In turn, without a diverter to divert excess energy, you could destroy your most expensive gadgets.
What is a surge diverter?
Lots of people understandably get a bit confused at the mention of a surge diverter, which creates its own issues. The confusion often arises because surge diverters are also known as surge protectors, and – to a lot of us – sounds like a fancy word for a power strip, which itself sounds like a fancy word for a multi-plug extension cord. Ahhhh the chaos!
However, a surge diverter plays a different role to a multi-plug extension cord. To explain its role, we need to take a look at an electrical surge.
What is an electrical surge?
An electrical surge can be explained as any increase in voltage above its norm for three nanoseconds or more. If the surge goes really high, it will cause damage to your electronic devices, such as your laptop. Over time, this damage can effectively destroy your belongings.
Otherwise, if a surge is mega-mega high, it can damage your electronic equipment in one fell swoop. Not cool!
But there’s more. If the surge is powerful enough, it can heat up a wire so much that it can actually burn the wire. With a frazzled wire, this can only mean that your device will be totally useless.
As you can already see, a surge diverter has an important role to play in maintaining your electronic gear. It detects too-high voltage, before diverting surplus electricity to what is known as grounding wire. To make sure it can do this, you first of all need to plug our surge diverter into a grounded outlet.
The importance of surge diverters if you use powerful electronic devices
If you use electronic accessories which need oodles of power to work, it’s highly recommended that you invest in a surge diverter.
House lights for example – If you ever think that they’re not that powerful, just ask yourself why they sometimes flicker. They flicker because they’re demanding a lot of the grid. They’re causing a strain, and this is when surges happen.
When you connect a surge diverter, you can divert excess energy during a surge, which will prevent your devices from sizzling, sparking, and eventually dying.
Do you need to use a surge diverter all the time?
The short answer to this one is a resounding Yes. Yes. Yes! (Just in case you didn’t get it the first time.)
However, that shouldn’t be the question here because it’s just common sense. The real question should be which gadgets need to be hooked up to a diverter.
A desk lamp, for example, doesn’t require all that much power. Therefore doesn’t need to be connected to a diverter. Neither does a small fan. Moreover, these items are largely affordable, and can easily be replaced in case of a surge.
What you really should do, is connect your diverter to more expensive household equipment, such as your television, computer, and refrigerator. As well as being very costly, these items also use complex microprocessors and are more prone to power surges.
If you’re not sure what gear to protect, just ask yourself: ‘what could I not live without? Which could cost the most to replace?’
If you still aren’t sure of the importance of surge diverters … let’s just say we hope it won’t take a power surge to convince you to invest in one!
If you need the help of a professional Gold Coast electrician to connect a few surge diverters for you, contact the pros at MC Power on 0432 022 294. We’re all about protecting your belongings. They are after all your lively hood!