Lightning can devastate your Entertainment System.
August 2, 2010

It seems across the country we're all experiencing more violent storms than ever before. Whether you believe it's the effect of global warming or not, if you have mucho $$ invested in an Entertainment System you don't want those components to end up looking like the photo at left!

The easiest time to allocate more $$ to surge protection gear is right after lightning strikes your house and torches all your electronics. Then you painfully realize you never want to be vulnerable again! But don't let the same misfortune countless thousands have had with this unpleasant experience follow suit for you. Get out ahead of this nasty nightmare and be proactive.

Ok how? Well, you can take a cue from the Electronics Design Group (EDG). The Piscataway, N.J., integration company offers a full array of power protection products and services at edgonline.com/lightning. The products and services are marketed just as EDG markets automation, lighting, home theaters and other staple A/V systems.

If you still don't buy into spendng the money to protect your gear, here's a true story from David Wexler, of The Little Guys in Mokena, Ill.

"We had two customers who lived next door to each other and lightning hit directly between the two homes. We had done work in both homes.

One of the homes was all ours and completely protected with Furman and Monster Cable power protection devices on everything we had done. They had a dedicated theater room as well as several systems throughout the house. The other had a single system we had done, along with work from a previous dealer that included a surround system as well as several TVs.

We were called by both to come out as almost everything electronic in the house was affected by the lightning strike. The home where we had done all of the work needed two Monster units replaced, and the rest of the power protection products simply had to be reset. There was no damage to any gear.

The other home – in which some of the gear was protected, and some wasn’t – only needed a Monster unit replaced on the system we installed; however, on the section we did not install, the lightning strike blew out four TVs and the surround system.

When we installed our system in the second home, we tried to get the homeowners to protect the previously installed gear as well. They didn’t want to spend the money. It would only have cost a few hundred dollars. I think the insurance claim for the non-protected gear was in the $15,000 range.

The end result: We walked out of one house with two burnt , and the other house with wheelers full of gear!"

The above true story was recently published in an article by Julie Jacobsen of CEPro.