A Look at a Nazi of a Surge Protecting Breaker Box

There were a few recent power flutters and an OUTRIGHT power surge in my neighborhood recently. I had just had my power breaker box replaced by a company, and I have to recommend the company rather than the power breaker unit brand for reasons I will make clear, called Chesapeake Electric. You see, breaker boxes have to accommodate varying current tolerances on a set of lines internal to the home. Therefor each box must be built from scratch at each home, even a town home complex like mine where there is a great deal of similarity from electric distributions in home to home. Getting back to the original recommendation, my breaker box performed like a champ. The surge was abated at the surge protector affixed to the box and NONE of the breakers tripped. About the only problem I had to recognize and cope with were the ancient LAN telephone lines that broke out of the wall due to the impetuous of the surge. Old telephone lines DO NOT pass through breaker boxes and therefor are VERY susceptible to power fluctuations. Apart from that I find Chesapeake Electric to be very good. Expensive, you will pay for good parts and labor that can actually understand and explain what they are doing.

This begs the question what can be done about old LAN telephone lines? I am not ready to cut my LAN lines yet. I like to pick up a phone and press big buttons and not get addvertized to. There is also a LOT of data carrying capacity that is NOT being exploited in those old lines, maybe you remember using faxes. They worked good and sent their info over those old lines. I note here that the original way those lines sent the dialed number data was by breaking and reconnecting the direct current line the number being reached once for each count up to the digit of interest. This old and tricky way of signaling on those lines that should be preserved as a standard in case of some disaster where the touch tones can't get through but the direct current signals can. We can fall back on ASCII or maybe MORSE code then. The trick to use is to set up an inductively coupled alternate path for the power on those lines that will pass the DTMF (dual tone multiple frequency) but clean up the block on the break in the DC current that is characteristic of MORSE or ASCII. Unimpeded straight DC must be passed on an original like line to power the telephone, but it is to go through a winding on the secondary winding of the transformer . The secondary is to be wound so that while DC is up the power line gets no path to ground but on pulse DC goes through the coil and a resistor to ground. The whole shebang should be placed in a unit and tucked away in the wall to protect the inner areas from wiring bursting out in a power surge. Here's me.