# Orchard Row Kitchen Service — (904) 201-3304 > Jacksonville sees about 68 thunderstorm days a year. Surges rarely kill an appliance outright, and what they do instead tells you where to look first. Source page: https://duvalthermador.com/almanac/storms-and-control-boards/ Title: Storms, Surges and Appliance Control Boards | Orchard Row --- - [Home](https://duvalthermador.com/) - [Almanac](https://duvalthermador.com/almanac/) - Why a storm takes one function and leaves the rest Almanac ## Why a storm takes one function and leaves the rest A surge seldom kills a whole appliance. It usually takes the display, the convection circuit or the communication between two boards, and leaves everything else working. July 29, 2026 · updated August 11, 2026 Jacksonville gets roughly sixty-eight thunderstorm days a year. Over the life of a kitchen that is a great many events, and almost none of them are the dramatic kind where something visibly burns out. The ordinary case is much quieter and much more confusing to live with. ### Partial failure is the normal outcome Modern appliances contain several boards, not one. A wall oven typically has a power board that switches the elements and a user interface board that runs the display and the touch controls, and the two talk to each other over a low voltage link. A refrigeration column has a main control, a display module and often a separate inverter for the compressor. A surge or a brownout does not usually reach all of those equally. The communication link and the low voltage supply are the most fragile part of the chain, so what fails first is the conversation between boards rather than either board’s main job. That is why the classic post-storm complaint is an oven that still bakes but shows a dark display, a range whose convection fan has stopped while the burners are fine, or a refrigerator that cools correctly but no longer reports its temperature. ### Why the timing matters to a diagnosis If you tell us the behaviour changed on a specific afternoon, and there was weather that afternoon, that single fact reorders the whole list. A gradual loss of oven accuracy over months is a sensor or an element. A function that disappeared between lunch and dinner is electrical, and we go to the boards and the connections first. It also changes the physical inspection. Surge damage frequently leaves marks: a discoloured trace, a swollen capacitor, a scorched connector pin. We open the case and look before ordering anything, because a board that shows a burnt connector usually means the connector needs replacing too, and fitting a new board onto a damaged plug simply destroys the new board. ### Brownouts do more damage than spikes Homeowners think about lightning. In practice the more common killer is the opposite condition, a supply that sags rather than spikes. Utility reclosing after a fault, a large motor starting somewhere on the same run, or a kitchen circuit carrying more than it was drawn for will all pull voltage down briefly. Switching power supplies respond to low input voltage by drawing more current, which heats their components. Do that a few hundred times and the supply fails, usually on a day with no weather at all, which is why the fault often appears weeks after the storm that started it. This is also why we look at what shares a circuit when a board fails in an older Mandarin kitchen. Kitchens that grew appliance by appliance frequently put a dishwasher, a disposal and a coffee machine on one run, and the sag when all three start together is a small, repeated version of the same damage. ### What actually helps A whole-house surge protective device at the panel is the single most useful measure, and it is cheap relative to one built-in appliance control board. It will not stop a direct strike and nobody should claim it does, but it clips the routine transients that do the accumulated damage. Point-of-use protection is worth adding for the appliances with the most electronics in them, though built-ins are usually hard-wired or plugged into a receptacle behind the cabinet, which makes this awkward in practice. Unplugging is genuinely effective and genuinely impractical for a refrigeration column. For a coffee machine or a countertop-adjacent appliance during a serious storm, it costs nothing. ### When you call Tell us the date, tell us what stopped, and tell us what still works. Those three facts routinely cut a diagnostic visit in half, and the visit is a flat $129 either way, credited toward the repair when you approve the work. If this is your appliance A flat $129 covers the visit and the diagnosis. It is credited toward the repair when you approve the work. Related - [Thermador range and rangetop repair in Mandarin](https://duvalthermador.com/repairs/ranges/) - [Thermador wall oven repair in Mandarin](https://duvalthermador.com/repairs/wall-oven/) - [Thermador refrigeration and column repair in Mandarin](https://duvalthermador.com/repairs/refrigeration-columns/) - [Thermador repair in Beauclerc](https://duvalthermador.com/roads/beauclerc/) - [Thermador repair along the Mandarin Road riverfront](https://duvalthermador.com/roads/mandarin-road-riverfront/) [All almanac entries](https://duvalthermador.com/almanac/) ![Close view of test leads on a circuit board and terminal block behind an appliance kick panel](https://duvalthermador.com/img/board-diagnostic-01-a.webp) *After a storm, the supply and the harness get tested first. The board is the expensive place to guess.* --- Booking is by telephone: (904) 201-3304. 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