In article <telecom24.280.16@telecom-digest.org>,
Howard S. Wharton <yhshowie@acsu.buffalo.edu> wrote:
> By daisy chaining your power strips, you are causing the first
> ones in the chain to be overloaded and possibility the circuit
> it's plugged into. And it is a fire waiting to happen.
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.
http://yosemitenews.info/
[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]
ellis@no.spam