Fizzzzz….Electrical fun.

This entry was to have been posted just before Christmas, but we had yet another twist to the story. It started back in November when we had one of the first thunderstorms of the winter. I should have had ample warning as last year one person lost their fax machine, satellite disc, satellite box, control panel on their cooker and computer modem all in one storm. Since then we tried to be careful, unplugging everything whenever a storm approached.

One morning I woke early just as it was getting light. The sky was overcast and I could see some lightning away in the distance towards Kalamata. Lainie was still sleeping, so as the storm seemed so far away I thought I would just have a quick look at the teletext pages on one of the TV channels where there are some news pages in English. Yes, you can guess what happened next! Although the storm still seemed a long way of, suddenly there was a strike very close to the house and it caused a surge in the power supply. The TV went with a loud bang and a terrible smell of burning, I couldn’t wait for Lainie to wake up so I could tell her! Later in the morning we also realised that we had lost our telephone, the strike had taken out the base station for the DECT phone we use. So, no TV and no telephone, guess how popular I was.

We replaced the TV with a new set from one of the supermarkets in Kalamata, a 21-inch screen with teletext for 109€, around £75, not too bad. We still had a phone in the house, but the problem was that it came from England. We could ring out ok but it didn’t ring when we had an incoming call, anyway, recently we managed to find a DECT phone from another supermarket for only 30€.

At the beginning of the week before Christmas we had another few days of thunderstorms. Now being very careful we unplugged everything to prevent any damage, well almost. We have an ISDN telephone line, so there is a box to convert the connection for ordinary telephones and a computer interface. A lightning strike must have sent a pulse through the telephone line blowing the computer interface but leaving the telephones working. So we called the OTE fault reporting number and tried to explain the problem.

The people in the support centre speak English making it a bit easier but when you try to explain something technical it gets more difficult. An engineer returned our call, but unfortunately the engineers don’t often speak any English, and he tried to tell us there could be no problem with our phone as he was speaking on our line. Lainie understood enough Greek to follow most of what he was saying but trying to make him understand the problem was with the box was far more difficult.

Finally, after missing an engineer who called while we were out, another called on the morning of Christmas Eve and brought a replacement box that solved the problem.

Since all this has happened we have bought several surge-protection adaptors to try to prevent this from happening again. If anyone has any suggestions for how to deal with lightning strikes and protect the whole house we would be pleased to hear from you!