February 27, 2013 was the one-year anniversary of a spectacular electrical surge I experienced on the houseboat. Some friends were visiting and just after it got dark the dining room chandelier started flashing dark and faint, we heard a crackle and smelled smoke coming from my office. They stayed while I called Portland General Electric, our utility.
They sent out a crew of three who came and redid the connectors outside by the walkway. The surge blew out the main circuit board of the hot tub, two surge protectors, light bulbs, the digital control on my stove, and caused my computer to continually shut itself off and reboot.
Some of my neighbors said it couldn't have been a surge because it would have gone down all the moorage wiring and blown out everyone's, but once they fixed the wires outside everything else worked fine. It took months to get everything repaired. The utilitily ultimately did take responsibility and I invited their tech guy out to talk to the moorage folks about additional things we can do to protect ourselves and electronics -- because after all, we do live on an island with a lot of trees that regularly fall on the wires and poles and cause our electricity to go out.
I ended up buying more expensive surge protectors as well as a "Cyber Power" 890 joules Battery Backup that my computer and printer are plugged into that has a 30 minute guaranteed backup. Now that I'm writing this I realize that I was also going to install a Surge Arrester at the fusebox that grounds things before a surge travels through the house and have not done that. My computer was repaired but still is quirky.
It was pretty scary and I was worried that the electrical system throughout the house had problems but fortunately that has not been the case and all has been well.
Connectors replaced outside
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