Media for Re: Power Strips for Home Networks

Re: Power Strips for Home Networks

Every power strip I own has a breaker in it. Please explain just show daisy chaining power strips to power low wattage power supplies cubes is able to overload anything without tripping the breakers.

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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think the problem would arise when the circuit breaker goes out of order, for example, melted into place where it should not be. I had a very old (too old to inquire about refund/replacement) Radio Shack device: 13.5 volts by 3 amps, DC power. I called it my little 'power house'. I had it sitting out in my garden shed, plugged in, providing power to a CB radio out there. In addition to an assortment of plugs allowing me to draw current from it in various ways (to run radios, etc), it also had a 'reset button' on the back side, when an overload or a short circuit somewhere caused it to trip. With little squat legs, it sat on a table back there, and had a 'cigarette lighter' style plug on the front it it (such as in an automobile) to either plug in a cigarette lighter or one of the more permanent plugs used to operate a cell phone or a ham/CB radio in a car.

One day I went out to the shed to get the bird food (seeds and corn I put out for the little guys by their nests in my back yard); I could literally _smell_ that thing cooking when I went in the shed. I reached up to the outlet and pulled the plug. The power house was _red hot_ ... just just warm, but _hot_. The little red reset switch on the back seemed to be stuck. Looking inside the unit, I found the plastic from the reset switch was melted where the breaker was supposed to be. That seems to be the problem; not that the strips would overload and blow their reset buttons, but that the reset buttons would be old and faulty and fail to work as they should.

Fortunatly, my garden shed did not burn down, but as an experiment I took a few newspapers and laid them on top of the red hot power supply. The papers did get a few scorch marks on them. That same day I cut the head (outlet plug in) off the power house (so no one else [the garbage collectors for example] would be tempted to retrieve it and try to use it), then ditched the whole thing in the trash. For another $39.00 (Radio Shack's price in 1990 approximatly) I can afford another one easier than I could afford to rebuild my walk-in shed behind my house. PAT]