Is there a Finnish (or scandinavian) Ebay type site?

[Rip]

So what happens if you get an electrical surge with no fuse in France? Everything goes pop?

Things might break. I think it is rather unlikely in urban environment and more likely in countryside. If you want you can buy separate surge protection equipment. Something smaller for individual appliance or bit bigger for several.
( one example, price includes warranty for the stuff you've have attached to in case it would not work as it was planned: http://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/ ... modeemi-ja )

Freezer and computer are probably the most likely things people protect.

[Pursuivant]

So what happens if you get an electrical surge with no fuse in France? Everything goes pop?

You get a major case of oh-la-la

No, the thing is the fuses are in a box, next to the electric meter, not all around the place.

[AsaSmith]

So what happens if you get an electrical surge with no fuse in France? Everything goes pop?

You get a major case of oh-la-la

No, the thing is the fuses are in a box, next to the electric meter, not all around the place.

Doesnt that beg the question why do we have individual fuses in that case?

[Pursuivant]

Doesnt that beg the question why do we have individual fuses in that case?

Not really, you also have carpetted bogs, separate hot and cold taps, and the plumbing outside the house nevermind double decker buses, driving on the wrong side of the road and lacking zebra crossings.

[Rip]

I just wonder if there is difference in response time for the two system. Certainly here it is possible that some sensitive equipment may respond easter than the fuse

[Pursuivant]

I think most appliances have fuses as well. Sometimes they're not "user replaceable" though.

[riku2]

So what happens if you get an electrical surge with no fuse in France? Everything goes pop?

You get a major case of oh-la-la

No, the thing is the fuses are in a box, next to the electric meter, not all around the place.

Doesnt that beg the question why do we have individual fuses in that case?

UK houses have their power sockets wired in what is called a ring main - a kind of loop starting from the fuse box, travelling from socket to socket and then back to the fuse box. So the load can travel two ways from the socket to the fuse box. This allows a lot of sockets to be served from one fuse in the fuse box and to handle this the fuse in the fuse box is quite big (30A). If each device plugged in didn't have its own fuse, then it could draw 30A before the main fuse cut the power. Considering a TV might draw 1A and even a toaster or hairdryer only 10A, then 30A will see some flames before the power is cut. So that's why UK items have their own fuse.

In europe the ring main isn't used, but instead a star type system, with individual wiring to each socket. So the fuse in the fusebox is much lower (eg 16A). So there is no need for individual fuses although you might think it would be good for those low power things like TV's and DVD players to trip at 3A like in the UK rather than 16A but that doesn't seem to cause much concern in europe (in the same way that swapping the live/neutral doesn't bother the germans/finns)

Fuses aren't all that good for "surges". They are good for over current situations which are normally caused by your kettle, iron, tv etc going wrong. The fuse will save the device or cable catching fire. But a fuse doesn't control the voltage and monitor that.

"surges" like you get from lightning or living next to a factory that suddenly causes a voltage drop are better handled by an RCD circuit breaker (aka ELCB). This will cut the power in this kind of situation (although no guarantee it will do so in time). A fuse would not help you in this situation, 1000v down the line to your tv will get there before the fuse can do anything since there is not a huge amount of current in the surge, it is the voltage that will cause the damage.

Most of my problems (living in the countryside) are surges coming down the phone line and into the ADSL modem and from there into the network socket of the PC. In the worst case (like when I lived in the UK) it will carry on into your home mains wiring and blow up non computer items (most likely those with lots of digital electronics inside rather than things like toasters and kettles).

[AsaSmith]

Thank you for that indepth answer to my query, most inforative. Didnt realuse they were on a "star" system so this will be handy to know if the fuse keeps tripping for whatever reason (it does currently in my flat in the uk!) So you've not had any surges in Finland? They have never broken your computer just other items in house? I've got to be honest, I'm pretty damn worried about my computer going pop as its a bloody expensive beast and thinking of it going pop makes my wallet quiver hence all the questions

[Upphew]

So you've not had any surges in Finland? They have never broken your computer just other items in house? I've got to be honest, I'm pretty damn worried about my computer going pop as its a bloody expensive beast and thinking of it going pop makes my wallet quiver hence all the questions

That is problem in the boonies where the electricity is provided with overhead power lines or phone lines, as riku2 said.

Yesterday computers shut down after lightning struck quite near, I didn't spot any delay between the flash and roar, but other devices didn't seem to take any effect from that. Certainly I have a cheap APC surge protector and the computer that wasn't plugged to that was laptop without battery.

0 broken computers from surges during my lifetime and I've kept them up and running 24/7 for years, not many years and I can say decades. Either I'm lucky or surges isn't that big thing here.

[riku2]

I live in the countryside in finland and in the last 10 years have lost about 5x ADSL routers. I think in two of those events the PC was damaged and the motherboard network adapter broken (but not the whole motherboard). In none of these events were other items plugged into the house damaged.

So to handle this I now have the ADSL modem connected to an ethernet -> fiber channel converter and there is then a fibre optic cable to the PC which has a fibre channel network card. So the surge could not travel via the network cable since it's now made of glass.

Most of the time lightning hits some distance from the house and travels along the phone lines but once the lightning hit nearby (perhaps a tree 10m from the house since it split and fell into the garden). In this case any wires in the house can act as antennas and experience a surge in voltage. Unshielded wires like network cabling are susceptible to this and I was also using this cabling for a temperature sensing system and HDMI over 2x CAT5 cables. So this time I lost the network adapter on the PC, a TV, all the temperature sensors and all the HDMI -> CAT5 converters as well as having a tree to dispose of.

[Jukka Aho]

So you've not had any surges in Finland? They have never broken your computer just other items in house? I've got to be honest, I'm pretty damn worried about my computer going pop as its a bloody expensive beast and thinking of it going pop makes my wallet quiver hence all the questions :)

I think the risk of a lightning strike breaking things is relatively low in urban, densely-built areas where the cables are laid underground beneath the streets. At least I’ve never had any incidents in such environments. But if you’re living in the middle of nowhere, and you’re the last subscriber on your kilometers long overhead telephone or electricity line, chances are you’d like to employ surge protectors and preferably manually unplug everything during a thunderstorm.