Slow Week with Power Issues

The week has been a little slow around here.  The weather ha been unsettled with frequent rain with temperatures in the mid 70s during the day.  Some nights the temperature has barely fallen into the mid 60s.  Not quite air conditioning weather but getting close.  Some of the larger motor homes have been running their air conditioners, however.

We have a 30 amp surge protector which protects our entire unit from power surges as well as over/under voltages (spikes and brown outs).  It plugs directly into the park’s power grid and then our power cord plugs into it.  When high voltage or low voltage occurs, the device shuts off our power protecting our electronics until the power returns to normal.   We bought it about 10 years ago and have never experienced a problem.  That is until Sunday.  Sunday the park experienced a low voltage occurrence, a “brown out.”  It lasted for only a split second.  As designed, our unit shut down for safety reasons.  It  is also designed to turn itself back on after a two minute delay.  Of course, our unit did not switch back on.  We had only 12 volt battery power.   I checked the parks voltage and it was 124.3 volts—well within the normal range.  We should have had power automatically restored, but we did not.  I unplugged the surge protector and then replugged it in hoping that would resolve the issue.  Again, no power even though power from the park pedestal was normal.  I then plugged our RV directly into the park’s power pedestal without the surge protector.  Several hours later, I again tried to get the dang thing to work, it would not.  It was dead.

Not wanting to buy another, I contacted the manufacturer to determine if the device could be fixed.  Of course it could but it would would cost more than new.  So we bought another and installed it.  But yesterday, the park suffered another brown out.  Our new device shut down our power as designed.  And yes, two minutes later we had power again.  Whoopee!  Back to normal.

But that’s not the end of the story.  Today, as I was preparing to rid ourselves of daily garbage, I decided to give the old device one more opportunity to work before discarding it.  Everything deserves a second chance to redeem itself.  You guessed it, it worked perfectly.  I tried it a second time.  Sure enough, it worked perfectly again.   Now we have two surge protectors.  We could return the new one for a refund, but we decided to keep it in case we have similar problems in the future.  If one burns out, we will have a back-up.  So 10 years from now when one fails, I won’t be able to find the other (or forgot that we had another).  But if one fails tomorrow, I’ll be happy that I tested and kept the old one.

Sunday was also the day that two attempt kicks for field goals decided the Super Bowl match-up.  One hit and one missed.  A brown out didn’t seem to be a problem.