Well, the power surge of 2008 has resulted in a full-scale appliance massacre at our house. Apparently, the combination of high winds and ocean air resulted in the corrosion of the neutral wire on the feed to our house. That was coupled with a break in the insulation of the positive and when the wind blew one time too many, the positive and neutral made contact and surged 240VAC through one leg of the circuit frying appliances attached to that leg.

The refrigerator, oven, microwave, and dryer are all dead. A visit from the local Sears appliance guy yielded a $1,500 part order (for just the fridge and dryer) and a scheduled return visit when the parts arrive. To add insult to injury, all of the appliances but the dryer are “built-in” – which will necessitate removing them to service them. Thus a separate diagnosis will happen for the oven/microwave group since the guy couldn’t get access to the problem areas.

The initial call to PG&E yielded an unacceptable response of “this is your problem” – that is, until we heard from our neighbors who share the same supply pole/line combo and had the exact same problem (they lost a bunch of video/audio equipment along with a couple of appliances and have some resulting issue in their junction/breaker box.)

Since we’re now looking at a week or so, I made the trip to buy a small interim fridge at least. We’ll see how this all plays out, but not a fun time so far…