![[SA] Arlec 4 Individually-Switched Outlet Power Board 2-Pack $2 @ Bunnings, Seaford](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/90/808390.jpg?h=fdbb1fb8)
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Found these on the clearance rack at Bunnings Seaford this arvo same as https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/804939
Had almost a box full as seen in pic.
[SA] Arlec 4 Individually-Switched Outlet Power Board 2-Pack $2 @ Bunnings, Seaford
670
LBarginHunterDad on 28/10/2023 - 22:04 bunnings.com.au (4780 clicks)
Last edited 30/10/2023 - 11:18 by 2 other users
Last edited 30/10/2023 - 11:18 by 2 other users
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That crackle, hiss and pop got me nervous š
Also removed from their website.
So they are sold out?
Says 0 available?
bunnings seaford, i dont think there is one in seaford
frankston?
or carrum downs?Sth Aus
oh diddnt know there was a seaford in sth aus
Even though the title says SA?
Yeah there are some super ace quality power boards appearing on the market. What gets me is why , and I know Australia and NZ are one of the few countries to have switches on powerboard / power strip , and thatās another thing that gets up my nose, most countries have different names for them but the slow removal of switches from power boards must be a cost saving idea?
These Cyberpower are one of the few backed by an actual insurance policy. Check out Arlec or Jackson, even HPM, no insurance policy on their power boards with surge protection.
So donāt shit on them too hard. When HPM arenāt even offering an insurance policy on a surged protected power board, with 12 sockets, no switches, Iād be looking for companies that actually offer an additional $50,000 protection.
The vast majority offer nothing and go ahead, make a claim to your power company any see how quick they are on paying claims if you house didnāt burn down, from a power board failure. Hang on to your receipts though. Cyberpower might want proof.
Iāve had no issues with them, except that they have no power switches on them. Maybe Iām old school or had a few belts from 240V over the years prior to RCDs being everywhere.
Fire Fighters often say āanother house fire caused by dust getting into a switchless power boardā.
As I said maybe Iām old sold, but if rather pay a bit extra for a switch or buy some of those baby protection plugs and file the empty sockets.
Keep in mind the protection is from rated surges of x kJ/MJ. No board is gonna cover surges from lightning strikes. Your best bet for lightning-heavy areas, a lightning arrestor. I also recall a conversation with an engineer from power board manufacturer Jacksons. He said you should replace your surge protected power board frequently, every 3-5 years cause the internal protection components get worn and over time protect against weaker surges and at some point may not protect at all.
Better to have contents insurance, backups, maybe use UPSes, etc rather than some expensive surge board that may in fact be not worth it.
Yeah, I still have contents insurance as well. Just pointing out that once upon a time, not so long ago, any powerboard which has MOV surge protection, most of, if not all, used to offered some sort of insurance policy to back up that the the Metal Oxide Varistors melt in order to possibly protect you gear, after all thatās what they are designed to do.
Look at the different boards around and they are 1000 Joules or less. You get hit close by a lightning strike, thereās a good chance itās going to jump those tiny MOV and burn out your gear. I was merely pointing out that Cyberpower are one of the few who still offer a separate insurance policy which apparently pays out a fairly substantial amount, but insurance gets complex any the fine print might have that all your gear gets covered by your contents insurance or even the power company, and that policy may or may not pay out any extra.
Insurance usually pays out one policy not two why is why if you have TPD insurance on your super itās pointless having iit on your Income Protection as well or or some other policy like your health insurance might have.
The amount of people who donāt check these things but think āoh hey, I have three policiesā fortunately Iāve never needed to to attempt to claim on multiple Income Protection insurances, but usually you will find out that you claim on the one that pays the most and Iām sure there is a clause on the Cyberpower boards, that if you claim. On your contents then you canāt claim on theirs. It would be nice if it worked that way but you really have to look up the fine print.
Amazingly enough there are plenty of people have donāt have contents insurance at all and they get caught in a bushfire, they are being pushed to the front of the line, meanwhile it could be a day or so where your contents policy gives you some emergency funds, if you are in a good place in line. Again never happened to me, just read or heard about this stuff.
As for the MOVs requiring replacement, thatās interesting, havenāt heard that before. Some. components need to be replaced but if that affects the operation and itās not clearly stated that these components need to be replaced ever 2-3 years then it should be quite clear on the box.
UPSes are pretty clear that you should test you batteries out every xx amount of days snd smaller UPS also state batteries need to be replaced every 3-4 years as typically lead acid batteries are only good for a particular amount of time. Now the UPS should have surge protection built into it as well. Again depends on how close the power surge occurs or lightning strike happens youāll know fairly quick if your gear isnāt working.
Itās important to check out how many Joules of energy some of these boards can handle. 750 Joules might protect you from a transformer spike but not a lighting strike. Thereās so much voltage itās going to jump over the protections pretty quick. Not really going to protect you from that but a spike from a car hitting a pole down the road, you might be lucky.
Anyway, probably over discussing the subject here ;-P
Definitely, not probably.
Iām so lost now.Insurance usually pays out one policy not two why is why if you have TPD insurance on your super itās pointless having iit on your Income Protection as well or or some other policy like your health insurance might have.
Not necessarily.
Insurance generally won't pay twice but if you had 2 policies where one offered $10 of coverage and the second offered $20 of coverage but made a claim for $15 then the second policy may cover you for the extra $5As for the MOVs requiring replacement, thatās interesting, havenāt heard that before
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/01/you-should-consider-reā¦
@spaceflight: TL;DR
small power surges build up over time, and while I canāt tell you how they work, you can look up Mental Oxide Varistors, not the only way but very common in electronics for a long time. Iād expect that a power surge of 400v would definitely take out my suppressors, but will that voltage arc across the gap left behind if that how they work and there would also be so large capacitors to try to absorb some of that voltage spike. If the arc is too big your voltage arrestor probably wouldnāt have survived but itās designed to die to save your gear. Iād have to that How to Geek or Reddit post see whether my theory is right.
If you got something as accurate as a multimeter that record minor spikes and brownouts, it might give you an idea how ācleanā your power really is and the range, from its low point to high point - much is dictated by the power grids transformer and how old it is. They also have big MF fuses designed to blow, usually if it gets hit by a spike or a car or wires touch during a windy day. Thereās multiple reasons.
I have new 6 x Cyberpower (like them or not) Surge suppressors here and the ones Iām using are ~12 years old. I bought them 12 months ago with the intention of swapping them over, just have gotten around to it yet. Slack I know.
So I prolly need to do it but the power doesnāt go off that often where I am, maybe Iām lucky. Sometimes I see a lost phase, sometimes all three phases go. Itās happened less than a dozen times in near 8 years and two were outages for upgrades. I could be lucky and have good gear feeding me power, but I also see the old oil filled transformers on poles and wires on poles. So unless there some big electric rectifier or something very sophisticated I live in an estate build in 2008, that power had to go through old infrastructure to get to me, but Iāve never seen the gear in the modern transformers they use nowadays.
These rest of this post is just general discussion about how we have a shortage of electronic engineers, but technology has nearly put some out of business. So skip it or read it.
Thanks. I guess youād need to monitor over time with some equipment that, considering most of us know that we do get voltage increases and decrease which used to affect many analogue devices which relied on the 50Hz and 60Hz (for people outside this country) Iām told it It was normal for power to drop from 50Hz to 40Hz and then it being sped up again at some point. That was years ago like 1970s, whether change in frequency happens these days, it doesnāt really make a huge difference because a huge amount of devices have switchmofe power supplies. It might stake out your fridge though. S switch model power supply can deal with an minor changes in frequencies and handles voltages from 100V to 250V.
When I was growing up, I used to stay regularly with my family at my two uncleās farm. At night Iād notice the old filament lights dim for anything up to 1 second. Happen every few minutes - I knew nothing of electronics at the time and even when I was older it was probably explained to me at some point but Iām maybe too old now to remember, but those were brown outs because of the distance AC power had to travel from a transformer, it always seemed to be the same brown flicker, mostly the same - notably that you could see it in a old GLS Filament light, but I never ever saw the lights go bright indicating that the incoming voltage was too high. I probably assumed their 240V phase was a long way from any gear to fix it - again Iām not an electrician or electronics engineer. So I guessed maybe their power was dropping from 240V > 220v and back to 240V again. Any longer and the transformer in their TV possibly would be affected. Anyway I was young. So I donāt know. I could ask but unlikely anyone will remember much and doubtful anyone measured them with a multimeter.
Repeating micro spikes from static electricity can take a small chunk out of a electronic circuit, depending on how much static you have built up and the humidity in the room. All electronics will fail, many light globes, when you turn it on, or used to because that inrush current was higher than expected and while I did two years of electronics engineering degree, I never finished it so my electronics knowledge has huge holes in it and it was nearly thirty years I went back to school to get electronics fundamentals but as I was working in the mid 90s and computers were taking off most of my class and my teacher said youāll never make decent money as an electronic engineer.
The only guy where I live now in a regional city has a 6 week wait just to look at something. He hates all the new SMB tech and says, we either get a test rig where we plug cards into and it tests various components or a service remote which gives me access to stuff or can even help or make a diagnose the problem. Lots of smart TVs can have a remote login and a tech can do a certain amount of tests. Remotely. Never seen it done. Heard about it.
That electronics engineer says this isnāt fixing electronics, Iām swapping out entire boards!
He prefers to work on technology from the 70s and 80s where you needed troubleshooting skills to work things out.
But since he is the only agent for most of the TV and HiFi gear he gets them, some heās had to do courses on, some are required to be sent to the distributor who then diagnoses the issue and again entire boards may be changed for faulty soldering equipment which in the case of Onkyo affected their higher end AVRs but Onkyo wore the problem, fount out that the problem started back in 1991 and gave everyone world wide until 2018 to get their unit fixed. This problem usually cropped up early, I had a unit that lasted 8 years before it happened, the replacement Onkyo I bought was a cheaper model but even though Onkyo said the problem was in manufacturing and was fixed wasnāt, since my new ones died with five months. Exact same problem.
Static electricity damage to CPUs and SoCS is real. Iāve seen electron microscope shots of a chunk being ripped out of a circuit nano meters wide.
Light globes were purposely designed to die because the element was so thin but we can see in cars that an indicator light that while itās only 12 volts, has thicker wire that is less likely to wear out or it takes a long time.
It starts to reason the electronics in surge suppressors will die. While out monitoring your voltage or you live in an old area while older transformers older wiring, you might get the old power surge to 260V, maybe not enough to cause the MOV to melt and break the circuit, but to take a small chunk out of it.
So long answer is Iām guessing and I need to do more research if I can be bothered.
What is a reputable lightening arrestor?
We have lost a serious number of electrical devices on 2 occasions due to lightening.Get an electrician in,frind one that checks power. You want to find out how clear your power is. You can do an AC > DC > AC like in online UPSes.
However if you are in a lightning prone area they can put lightning arrestors in your fuse box/meter box, but if the strike is close itās going to jump all that. Best go get a professional to recommend some serious gear. Anywhere in 50-100 metres that strike is going to do major damage. If itās happened twice and they have put any extra gear in, Iād be taking it up with your State Electricity Service, if they are private you can try both.
Trying to stop lightning taking out your house is a tough ask, but not impossible. It might end up costing you a lot though.
If you power is bad and youāve lost gear and had to clean to get new stuff, you want full power rectification, not just surge suppressors. You need grid based gear to deal with it.
Schneider Electric is the sort of company you need yo be talking to. They handle APC, arguably the best brand in UPS and power rectification. But really itās a grid issue, but itās worth getting advice from an electrician who deals in this sort of thing first. You need an advocate.
The gear to help arrest not just suppress must have gotten cheaper by now but if you are not going to move house and you are losing gear, the power infrastructure in your area needs work. IMHO
Just my 2 Cents worth. If itās bad power you need a full audit of your house and switchboard and then a monitor on your incoming power to measure for 12-24 even 168 hours to work out if there is a time.
You should get your wholesaler involved once the electrician has written it up. But your average sparkie might not be interested so might have to call a few or Google.
Bloody hell! At that price you couldnt be blamed for taking the entire box.
Any left?
Still $10 in qld, not $2
Must be the pro version as it's night mode
Hey OP, any chance you recall the price for the Super Hooks in the box to the left?
Hang on, are they also $2??
$2 and about 5 left
Went to my local Bunnings. They refused to match the price.
Wtf, I just bought them today at my local Bunnings, except their sale price was $11
I did not find this 2 pack st St Leonards at all, must be out already
Out of stock at Seaford now
Thanks, but i prefer the snap, crackle, pop, frisson and chance of house fire one gets from a Cyberpower powerboard :)
Seriously, I just buy the Belkin ones