A Safety Lesson for Small Business
We learned an interesting safety lesson today and it’s one that every small business should be aware of.
Here in Australia small business and home office people are allowed a tax deduction for equipment and furnishings used for the business. We’re allowed to replace that equipment every so often so it can be quite economical to regularly replace such things as office chairs and small appliances that get a lot of use.
In fact, because they are tax deductable there really are few valid reasons for keeping them for more than a few years.
Today we learned a lesson about replacing equipment that might not always be visible because equipment doesn’t last forever.
Because we live in an area where there are plenty of thunderstorms and power surges all our computers and monitors are plugged into heavy duty surge protectors. They sit out of site under our desks and it’s easy to forget them - so easy in fact that the ones under my desk were almost three years old.
Today one failed … while we were out. There were no problems with power surges or storms, it just began to malfunction and finally shut down the computers. When we got home we presumed that there had been a power surge and so I started the computers and monitors on my desk as soon as I found that they were off.
They ran for about two minutes and shut down again and wouldn’t restart. So I stuck my head under the desk to make sure there were no loose connections - and that’s when I could smell that something wasn’t right. I could smell quite a distinct burnt smell and I finally traced it back to one of the the surge protectors.
As I write this there are two new surge protectors under the desk and the old ones are out in the garbage. From now on we’ll be replacing our surge protectors every two years - whether they need replacing or not. It wouldn’t have taken much for the faulty protector to go up in flames.
