why you should always have drip loops and powerstrips protected from splashes

[meadbhb]

Hiya,
If it wasn't for my husband a few years ago, we'd be dead. I had set up a new strip with a timer and didn't do a drip loop. He woke up out of a dead sleep asking what that noise was. It was my strip exploding....my protien skimmer cup had overflowed and had dripped into the strip. By the time we figured out what was going on, the strip was in flames.
Needless to say, everything is off the floor and has a drip loop now.
Kim/Meadbhb

 

[buckster71]

Originally Posted by SCSInet
Yes, this likely would have stopped this. Nothing else offers this kind of protection. Surge protectors won't stop this, UPS units won't stop this. GFIs are the key.
I had an incident a few weeks ago where I was doing a water change so I was pumping water from a holding tank to my sump. The hose slipped and sprayed water around the inside of my stand.
A bit of water hit the power strip and all I heard was a "click" across the room and all of my tanks went dark. Just like that. No smoke, no sparks.
I dried off the power strip, hit reset, and I was back up and running.
GFIs rock.
That happened to me as I moved my pump that is internal to the sump and the hose slipped off the end....(WHY DID I FORGET A STRAP WHEN I REDID MY FLEXIBLE TUBING?!?) and the outlet of the pump sprayed all over and I fried my 40 dollar wave generator/power strip!!!!
NOW...I spent 200 dollars on wet env. boxes, three conductor cable, cable clamps...and a whole lot of extra work to do to make my tanks hurricane proof.

 

[chano]

Weird when i did my waterchange last week the chord from my filter was touching the water and it was running down right into my strip. I began to smell smoke. I looked in my stand and my surge protector was sitting in a puddle. It was also putting off a nice pretty smoke cloud. What was it about last week? At least it was a bunch of close calls and no major disasters.