The Zap Cap

I knew that moving to the lightning capital of the country, FL, would be interesting on many levels. First, I am very afraid of lightning. Having grown up in West Texas, where the storms can be pretty bad, left me with a great respect for Mother Nature. Second, I was very worried about my expensive studio equipment. Should we be hit by lightning, or affected by a bad power surge- I could lose a lot!

We initially invested in very good surge protectors for my studio. This made me feel a little better. Then, my neighbor told me about something interesting. It turns out our local electric company offers a contraption known as a Zap Cap. I had never heard of such a thing, so I looked it up.

It's a meter based system that offers protection from high-voltage surges. Is it foolproof? No. But I figure it's better than nothing! For about $7 a month we rent the unit that attaches to our meter. For about $12-$50 per strip we buy the plug in protectors that we plug all our electronics and appliances into.

Our Zap Cap was installed yesterday, and I am in the process of converting all of my electronics to the approved power strips. It will be interesting to see how it works, but hopefully we'll never have to!

Every section of the country has their own 'natural disasters' to consider, and as voice actors and producers we have to take every step we can to protect our equipment and file archives. If you have a special system you use, I'd love to hear about it!

Kara Edwards Voice Over