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Sensitive appliances in your home
Your home contains all sorts, types or kinds of appliances. By "appliances," understand not only the traditional household helpers, but also the entertainment electronics, the family's computer(s), smart telephones, control systems (thermostats, garage door, etc.), and all the new things to come.
More and more, traditional large appliances in your home depend on very sophisticated electronics for their control. This can often make them sensitive to surges (as well as power interruptions, but that is another story...).
To help sort out which types of your appliances might be damaged or upset, you can describe them in general terms depending on their connections: power, telephone, cable, or antennas. Each of these connections offers a path for a surge to come in, something that might be overlooked when the cause of damage is explained as a "power surge."
The first type includes electronics that are connected only to the power, such as a computer with no modem, a TV set with rabbit ears, a VCR not connected to cable TV, a table-top radio, a microwave oven, etc. Surge protection of these is not particularly difficult, and quite otten it is already built-in by the manufacturer.
The second type, for which more protection might be needed, includes electronics that are powered, of course, from your power receptacles but also connected to an external communications system: telephone, cable TV, satellite receiver. A slightly different but similar situation, which also needs attention, is that of appliances connected to a household control system such as garage door opener, intrusion or fire alarm, automatic sprinklers, or intercom.
We will see later why the two kinds of appliances face different risks of being damaged and consequently might require different protection methods.
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