Ask Slashdot: Best Option For Heavy-Duty, Full-Home Surge Protection? 341
First time accepted submitter kmoser writes "Like most people, I have a couple of surge protectors for sensitive/important electronics, and even a UPS for a couple of items like computers. But I don't have surge protector on all outlets, and these consumer-grade devices don't cover things like 220 volt appliances. Add to that the fact that I live in a lightning-prone area and it's only a matter of time before one of my expensive devices has a major meltdown. I've looked into full-home surge protectors that install next to the fuse box but the prices vary widely and I have no idea how reliable they are or what brands are good. An electrician friend tells me they can still blow out, and when they do they're difficult to replace if they were installed behind a wall. Can anybody shed some light on the best options for protecting all the electronics in my house with a single surge protector?"
wait .. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:wait .. (Score:5, Interesting)
They get installed inline with the main house circuit breaker panel. Expensive.
Most people budget for the $$$ for the device. Then they forget the labor to do it right, and always forget to spend the $$$ for a good ground connection.
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They get installed inline with the main house circuit breaker panel. Expensive.
Most people budget for the $$$ for the device. Then they forget the labor to do it right, and always forget to spend the $$$ for a good ground connection.
As he lives in a lightning-prone area he'll need to protect every line into the house, TV antenna, cable, telephone etc. Only protecting the power line is not enough. Up the $$$ budget some more.
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This will still not protect against induced voltages. Electromagnetic waves can go right through walls, you see.
Replace your standard walls with an uninterrupted tight conductive wire mesh, to provide shielding, lining every wall from the ground and floor all the way to the top of the roof, and enclose it completely at the top, at the bottom, and on every side.
Bonus. (Score:3)
Which also lets you take off your tinfoil hat indoors.
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I bought a kit that included the part that an electrician installed connected to the breaker box, an inline piece for cable, and another for telephone. It was recommended to put expensive electronics on smaller plug-in surge protectors to guard against the very brief leakage that can occur just before the whole-house protector blows. This after a buddy just uphill from me lost the electronics in just about everything (dishwasher, garage door opener, etc.) but not his computers.
re: good ground connection (Score:4)
In my experience, getting a good ground is sometimes the toughest part of home electrical upgrades, period!
Twice in a row now, I'm moved into homes that were built in the 1950's or 1960's, and didn't even provide 3 prong grounded wall outlets.
In both cases, I tried to hire an electrician to upgrade my home to properly grounded outlets, and after they did a few basic tests, essentially told me they weren't willign to go through the trouble it would take to do it. (Basically, they decided the only good way to accomplish it involved sinking a rod into the ground outside and wiring the main buss to it with an underground cable.) Either they were too lazy to do it, or simply thought it would take too much of their time to be able to quote me anything like a reasonable price for the project.
Re: good ground connection (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't find an electrician to do it for you, it's not that difficult to do it yourself. Get 2 ea. 6' copper ground spikes from your local hardware or electrical supply store, and pound them in with a sledgehammer. Careful not to bend them too much in the process. They aren't iron.
Then a little bit of bare copper ground line, maybe around 3 to 4 gauge, to each spike.
It's not a difficult job at all unless your house was built on top of a giant rock. I suspect that the real issue was not the ground spike, but running the rest of the ground wires through existing walls. That is the kind of job that no electrician likes to do. When I was looking to buy a home I passed up an otherwise great price on a nice house for exactly the same reason.
Sure, I could have taken the money saved and upgraded the wiring, but it would have been so much of a pain, and caused so much temporary destruction to the interior, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble.
Re: good ground connection (Score:5, Informative)
That might not meet code, these days, but it used to for a very long time. And it will give you a serviceable ground.
Don't ground to your gas pipe, though. Not A Good Idea.
Re: good ground connection (Score:5, Informative)
Re: good ground connection (Score:5, Informative)
You ALSO have to run bare copper back to the service entrance for water, and bond to that as well. In case one or the other fails, you still have a reliable path to ground.
That's not why you have to do it; "grounding" is relative and not a magic thing that guarantees no current will flow, electrical current can flow between "ground" connections. Ground potential varies from place to place, 10 feet away, ground can be at a different potential. Geology, Electromagnetic interference, solar activity, lightning, electrical faults elsewhere, and other factors can further exacerbate the difference.
Bonding is required for the same reason that Neutral and Ground must be connected together at one place (the main service panel). If you do not have Plumbing Ground and Electrical ground bonded, you have different parts of your system connected to ground at different places ---- this means, the ground on your service panel can now be at a different electrical potential than your plumbing.
What this means, is that if something conductive touches both your plumbing, and something connected to the main panel ground (or neutral), current will flow through that conductive thing, to equalize the potential of the different grounds.
If that conductive thing is a human, this could very well mean that someone dies, because they touched the tap electrically connected to the plumbing, and a kitchen appliance with a metal chassis connected to neutral.
Therefore, the requirement is that you already have these bonded together with a low resistance path.. The bonding ensures that both systems are always at the same potential, so current does not flow between Neutral or Main panel ground and your plumbing.
Re:cuz $350 is going to bankrupt YUO ! (Score:5, Insightful)
You may as well save your money because that $200 whole house surge protector isn't going to protect you from a lightning strike any better than a good quality surge protecting power strip.
Just use surge protectors where needed that have an equipment replacement guarantee - and make sure you're protecting phone lines, TV cables, etc too, not just power.
If you have something truly expensive to protect, use an online ups (not line interactive) for more isolation - a lightning strike might take out your UPS, but is less likely to reach your computer (but if it's a nearby strike, all bets are off since even your ground can be a path for a power surge).
Or, just throw caution to the wind - I spent 10 years in a lightning prone area, and never used a surge protector at all -- lightning made the lights flicker many times, but I never lost a computer, TV, or stereo (or any other device) to a lightning strike. On the other hand, I saw the aftermath of a nearby strike on a friends house - lightning hit a nearby power pole, and he said he saw sparks shooting from his outlets. He did lose his TV and stereo (which were both plugged in but powered off by a physical switch at the time).
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Re:cuz $350 is going to bankrupt YUO ! (Score:5, Funny)
Lightning is weird and it is very difficult to predict what may be harmed by a strike.
Just like my ex-wife!
Re:cuz $350 is going to bankrupt YUO ! (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't install surge protectors to defend against a direct lightning strike --- there is no real defense against a direct lightning strike - you can make it less likely with a well-engineered lightning rod protection system.
You install surge protectors to defend against currents induced by nearby lightning in your wiring. This is protection against damage lightning can cause without actually striking your wiring, or your building. If lightning strikes a mile away from you, and hits the ground, or a tree: this lightning can still induce currents in unshielded underground and overhead power and data cables. If there is no surge protection, the induced currents may destroy sensitive electronics such as computer power supplies.
In a direct hit situation, lightning hitting a surged protected circuit can easily arc through any surge protector; human safety is paramount in the design of surge protection and electrical systems, anyways, so there are always compromises anyways, that is, surge protectors still share a common ground with everything else, and a direct hit clamped to ground can effect everything else tied to that ground --- Remember, with resistors in parallel, the amount of current is proportional to the resistance - the amount of voltage passing through the higher resistance path is not zero. Even if 99.9% of the lightning strike is clamped to ground, the 0.1% can still be 10000 volts.
No commercially available surge protector apparatus able to be fitted to a home electrical system and other utility lines entering a building with a price that is remotely affordable to the average homeowner is capable of providing remotely robust protection against a direct strike.
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Just use surge protectors where needed that have an equipment replacement guarantee
Those guarantees are usually worthless I'm afraid. If you read the small print they require you to send affected items to them for evaluation. Do you really want to send them your fridge and wait for them to decide if a surge killed it and then buy you another (inferior) one?
Just get home contents insurance with a reasonable policy.
Not Advice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not Advice (Score:5, Informative)
Unless your dealing with medical equipment or servers don't bother with some expensive custom solution.
This isn't an expensive custom solution. It's becoming more common in new construction. Home Depot has several models to choose from, [homedepot.com] some as low as $30. [homedepot.com]
The question is, how good is it?
Not honest, in my opinion. (Score:4, Informative)
Surge protector Fraud Alert: The maximum allowed energy of the $30 surge protector [homedepot.com], 560 joules [wikipedia.org], is tiny. It seems that the manufacturer is taking advantage of the ignorance of most people and Home Depot about electricity.
A joule is 2.78 x 10-4 Watt-Hours of energy. Calculating the maximum energy allowed by the surge protector: 2.78 x 10-4 * 560 = 0.15568 Watt-Hours. That means the surge protector can protect against a 1,000 watt surge for 0.00015568 hours. If I calculated correctly, that is 1,000 watts for 0.560448 seconds. More realistically, a lightning strike would cause at least a 10,000 watt surge. The surge protector could protect against that for 56 milliseconds, a trivial amount of time. I've seen lightning strikes that lasted more than a hundred milliseconds. The current in a 10,000 watt surge at the rated 175 volts is only about 57 amps. If you want to protect against a more realistic 570 amp surge, the protector will last only 5 milliseconds until it explodes.
The surge protector linked may just have 3 small MOVs [wikipedia.org].
Some surge protectors give no indication or inadequate indication when they have burnt and stopped protecting. The linked description says, "LED indicates operational status". For you to know if the device is working, you must check to see if the LED is lit. That's not convenient if it is installed in "service-entrance locations".
The Home Depot web page to which you linked says,
"36,000 Amp maximum
20,000-volt maximum surge current".
The "maximum surge current" listed is said to be 36,000 amps, but that is for a minuscule amount of time. Volts are not current; saying "20,000-volt maximum surge current" is ignorant.
Translation: The CEO of Home Depot has no technical knowledge and should be replaced immediately. If I were CEO of Home Depot, one of the first things I would do would be to make sure all the descriptions were accurate; I would not allow sneaky, tricky product descriptions.
Re:Mod down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mod down (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. In fact, in some courses (sigh...flame suit on...MBA classes, specifically), you are taught to always consider not only a few viable and different options, but also the "do-nothing" option. Evaluate what happens if questioner does nothing, i.e. stays with the status quo.
Sometimes people come up with all kinds of extravagant and ridiculous schemes and never stop to consider "well, I know my boss said 'do something', but what would be the consequences if we left things as they are?". The answer may not be palatable to the person with the bucks, but then again the do-nothing approach could turn out to be the best option.
I know MBA courses are not the sole preserve of such wisdom, but that's where I had it drummed into me (possibly in an effort to try and avoid the kinds of expensive mistakes that make people sneer at MBAs). First option in your list - do nothing, stay with what you have now. Expenses, risks, benefits.
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Insurance works once. After you file a claim your policy is cancelled or your rates become equal to the value of your claim and they exclude coverage on the risk you filed a claim on. The insurance companies share claim histories too so forget switching to a different company.
Better to have some loss mitigation tech in place in addition to insurance. You might get a break on rates too.
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Re:Not Advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure why it shouldn't be their responsibility. The power company folks were the cheapskates who ran the lines to your house above the ground in the first place. Lightning is highly unlikely to damage equipment in areas where all the power lines run underground as they properly should. If it isn't a high tension line, it really doesn't belong above the ground, and arguably even then.
Re:Not Advice (Score:4, Interesting)
guide from dehn (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.dehn.de/pdf/blitzplaner/BBP_2007_E_complete.pdf
Buy home insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Buy home insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
The cost of a whole home UPS/surge protectors is going to be rather more than the equipment it protects.
Whole house UPS, yes, thats some dough. Whole house surge protector, absolutely not. You're looking at about $200 for the device, maybe 2-3 times that for installation (to do it RIGHT). Even retail home depot it would be hard to blow more than $400 total for the device plus all parts.
I suppose if you go by the /.er stereotype where mom's basement has a 5 gallon drum as a chair, a $89 special monitor with a bare incandescent bulb over the monitor hanging by the wires for illumination and a $899 graphics card that is probably not going to get blown out by lightning, then whole house is probably not worth it.
One huge problem is its not "buy it and forget it" you will have to replace it eventually, where eventually depends on how much lighting you get.
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A whole-house surge suppressor runs $50 to $100 plus installation. It works by shorting hot to common long enough to trip the main breaker when the voltage spikes. Since electricity takes the easiest path, it follows the short instead of destroying your equipment.
For a large surge (nearby lightning strike) it generally burns out the surge suppressor too. Complete with smoke. Seen it happen with one of mine. Pretty much the same a a power strip surge suppresor. So don't install it behind a wall.
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Whole house surge protectors belong on the outside panel. I had one on my house in Colorado (which was also equipped with professionally installed lightening protectors). Tripped once after a near strike. A little flag popped up indicating that it had blown (the other tip off was the lack of power inside the home). Had to replace the MOV [wikipedia.org] in it - cost $25.
Now perhaps the separate smaller surge protectors all over the house would have safed the various gizmos, but perhaps not. I don't trust most of the
Transient Surge Protection (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the 'key phrase' to use when talking to folks, "Transient Surge Protection". Covers everything from the neighbors 220v welder switching on to an induced over voltage from a near hit 1/4 mile away or so.
There isn't a simple "plug 'n play" solution. For example, Motorola's R-56 communications site standard is some 500 pages of how to do this. It takes intentional planning and a bit of engineering as there are at least 2, if not more goals to consider. NEC and local codes come into play as well.
It's not a trivial task. It won't tolerate a trivial solution. Expect to spend some time and money to do it right or risk not only a false sense of security but the chance of making things worse.
links:
http://www.radioandtrunking.com/downloads/motorola/R56_2005_manual.pdf
Raycap (Score:3, Informative)
I highly recommend you check out Raycap products (http://www.raycapsurgeprotection.com/), they're widely used in the Telecom industry and I use then in all my DataCenters.
Home Warrenty (Score:2)
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As always, read the small print on it. Also, many contain deductibles per year. When a tree fell on my parents house, they still had to pay $300 on the repairs. Of course, considering it was a 45 foot or so pine onto the roof, that's not bad.
homeowners or renters insurance (Score:2, Informative)
I live in a lightning-prone area, but never taken a hit. it's a gamble, but that's what insurance is for to begin with. sounds like you already have all you need, why spend more money to protect appliances unless they can't be replaced? whatever your deductible is has got to be cheaper than the type of solution you're looking for.
Does *not* replace local surge protection! (Score:4, Interesting)
Any electrician will tell you that whole house surge protection does not replace local surge protection. It stops most of the spike but not all of it. You still have to have surge protection strips locally for sensitive equipment.
Only a matter of time? (Score:2)
Honestly, how important are surge protectors? Don't most have a disclaimer that they don't protect vs lightning anyway?
I'm sure for large businesses or extreme cost equipment they are a good investment, but for home users are they really needed?
(Honest question since I don't really know)
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Honestly, how important are surge protectors? Don't most have a disclaimer that they don't protect vs lightning anyway?
I'm sure for large businesses or extreme cost equipment they are a good investment, but for home users are they really needed?
(Honest question since I don't really know)
A strike anywhere close to your house can cause a lot of havoc. And any one item you have to replace may not seem so bad, but you could also lose several at once.
I lost an ethernet port, the controller for my home alarm system, the controller for my garage door opener and a 35" TV set in one strike. Altogether this cost over $800 bucks to recover from and I didn't even replace the TV!. All of this was also in a new, well-grounded house.
I'm in Iowa - not really a legendary place for lightning - and have had
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s/roads/rods
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I had an ADSL modem saved by a surge protector once upon a time (late 90s/early 00s, don't remember exactly when). A few other things also survived thanks to surge protectors (a couple of the surge protectors even magically survived the incident).
What incident you ask? Well, lightning struck a tree down the street, a friend of mine who lived a little closer to the lightning strike had his 56k modem literally destroyed (we're not just talking about the magic smoke being let out, we're talking about the modem
SPD's are expensive. (Score:3, Informative)
EE Here
Seriously, finding a single phase SPD to protect your house is expensive. And if they take a direct strike, they'll blow out and need to be replaced (also expensive). Your best bet would be to install some lightning protection air terminals on the roof of your house, and run some down conductors to ground rods. This'll be expensive too, but there's less of a chance of needing a replacement. If you really want to go the SPD route, Siemens has some good products.
Honestly, I wouldn't do either. I'd put some surge protectors on my most expensive electronics and just go through the process of unplugging things when a big storm comes up. If that isn't an option, then be prepared to spend money.
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While replacing a single expensive surge protector might be expensive it is still a lot more convenient than having to order a new fridge, buy a new computer (and transfer data from your fried one), buying a new stereo and all the other shit that might break.
Surge protector breaks? Bypass it and wait for the new one to be delivered/installed.
Every fucking gadget and piece of electric equipment in your home breaks? Oh goodie, you get to spend a couple of weeks fixing everything.
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Why are you even mentioning air terminals? Unless your house is actually on top of a mountain, the probability of a direct strike is miniscule compared to that of a power or data line surge. The poster didn't even ask about direct strikes.
Breaker-box-mounted surge protectors are now in the sub-$200 range at Home Depot etc. My house has one of these as well as surge protectors on all the sensitive equipment. Anything that gets past the main surge protector, or gets induced in the house itself by nearby
Re:SPD's are expensive. (Score:4, Interesting)
Heh. My house was saved from a lightning strike a few years ago by the mailbox.
The mailbox pedestal (masonry) had chicken wire inside, apparently to reinforce the mortar between the cinder block core and the outer layer of rock. One stormy night a LOUD clap of thunder was heard and one (only one) breaker popped, for a room in the back of the house. The next morning we discovered pulverized bits of masonry all over the front yard and a large divot in one corner of the mailbox.
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Depends on where you live. The Front Range in Colorado (Colorado Springs-Fort Collins metro area) has some of the highest lightening frequency in the country. After two of my neighbors had direct or near direct strikes to their houses - with concomitant significant costs, I put up air terminals, ground lines and multiple levels of surge protection. After another guy down the block fried his home theatre system, a couple other neighbors also joined in.
Not necessarily typical, but it does happen. Once you
Some power companies sell it, I have it at home (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Some power companies sell it, I have it at home (Score:4, Informative)
Read it closer. They only insure the "major appliances", which they list specifically, and which are more tolerant of over-voltage than delicate electronic devices.
You're still on fuses? (Score:4, Informative)
When I had my house converted to circuit breakers, it was less than $100 for them to add the whole-house surge, but the electrician was already there for the panel replacement. The whole job was only $700, but that was a good decade or so ago.
It just slots into two of the circuit breaker spaces, so I'm assuming it's just open the panel cover and swap 'em out should something go wrong. (mind you, he also drove in a couple of new grounding rods outside, and connected it all up, so the installation was a little more than just slotting them in)
Whole house brownouts on the other hand ... that's something I've still got issues with, but I'm not willing to put up the money for a giant flywheel.
Can't be done centrally (Score:5, Informative)
Effective lightning protection is layered. The socket surge protectors are actually meant to be used in combination with the other layers, not standalone. A close enough lightning strike will induce strong currents in the wiring between the fuse box and your appliances. The surge protectors are designed to protect against the resulting voltage and not much more, and obviously a central surge protector can not protect your appliances if it's not between the surge and the appliance. Stronger surges from lightning strikes into the power lines outside your house on the other hand will not be stopped by the small surge protectors alone. You need both. And then you'll also want a lightning rod to prevent direct strikes into your wiring, because no surge protector would be able to handle a direct strike.
Faraday cages (Score:4, Insightful)
Effective lightning protection is layered. One of the best things you can do to stop errant radio waves from messing with you is to build a Faraday cage around your house. That will provide an effective defense against lightning strikes from outside the home.
However, this won't protect you from lightning strikes that occur INSIDE the Faraday cage. To defend against that, you need to not only have everything inside a Faraday cage, with a household surge suppressor, you also need to have a separate Faraday cage around every electronic device in the home, each with its own surge suppressor. It may seem a bit awkward, having to crawl inside a cage to watch TV or play computer, but it's worth it!
That way, when the aliens attack with their pulse EMP weapons, you will be blithely unaffected and will be able to sell your stereo on Ebay when everybody else's has been blown to 5h17.
Seriously, why is this important? If you care about your device, get a $10 surge suppressing power strip and call it good. I've already had several devices saved by such devices, when my parent's house was hit by lightning, it blew out their TV/VCR, microwave, telephone, and just about everything else in the house, except for the computer that I'd insisted they buy a SS power strip for.
Three-level protection (Score:5, Informative)
We've got an observatory on a hill with air cabling and plenty of lightning. Our three-stage
protection has never failed through the power line. DSL connections have died many times through the
telephone lines.
First line of defence are large MOV devices with separate grounding installed at the nearest pole. Cost about 600USD.
Second line is at the breaked boxes, cost 400 USD.
Third line is done with 'normal' plug-level protectors for the most sensitive equipment.
Google for Phoenix Contact surge protection..
Re:Three-level protection (Score:4, Funny)
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I commented elsewhere, so can't mod anymore, but grandparent gives the best answer here. Different surge suppressors have different use cases. And a good ground is critical, or you're wasting your money.
They do exist (Score:4, Informative)
Here is an excellent panel mounted surge suppressor. http://ep2000.com/index.php?page=industrial [ep2000.com]
It isn't cheap (several hundred dollars IIRC) but excellent quality.
Lightning rods (Score:3)
Go off the grid with your own reactor (Score:2)
Portable nuclear reactors [treehugger.com] are cost efficient and you never have to argue with your power company again!
How about a lightning rod? (Score:2)
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A lightning rod won't help you if the power pole leading to your house is struck.
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Surges vs. Lightning (Score:4, Informative)
I use an isolating UPS (Score:2)
...the variety that supplies power not from the line (which is random and sporadic at the best of times, *often* spiking over 1200v here), but from the battery via a complex circuit which ends up supplying a very clean 50Hz signal at 220v while being continuously charged from the main. So what we have basically is:
dirty line 220-1200vac->isolator step-down to 13.5vac->regulator to 12vdc->battery stack->isolator step-up to 240v->regulator to 220vac->terminal
Works very well, I have a 15-minu
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Any reason to use 48v instead of 12v? Seems to be a lot of 48v and 24v equipment available for the solar market.
Anti-Lightning (Score:3)
Protecting an entire building from lightning is a solved problem. You need a lightning rod [wikipedia.org].
My aunt and uncle live in a hundred year old farm house. It has a lightning rod. Their butter churn [wikipedia.org] has never had to be replaced due to a blown circuit.
Electric Utility Protection (Score:2)
Internal surges (Score:2)
Another thing to consider: will your "whole house" surge protector protect you from internal surges?
The only surge that I have ever had blow out electronic equipment in my home was caused internally by an electrician who was supposedly fixing my wiring, not by an external lightning strike.
Best solution (Score:2)
A whole house surge protector is not expensive, and easy to install. They simply mount to the main box and connect to the mains, either through a circuit breaker or where the main line connects to the panel. Trivial through the (double/240V) breaker. It can be connected in parallel with your heaviest 240V appliance if no empty breaker location are available, but this means that on those rare times that breaker is turned off it will not be functioning. Better to use a moderately high amp dedicated breaker
Lowes/HomeDepot have'em (Score:4, Informative)
Whole-house surge protectors run $40-60 at Lowes and Home Depot (Siemans/SquareD), but you're best to get an electrician to install them because they need to be installed in the breaker box. One type is a double-breaker and clamps into the A & B busses with a wire to ground. The other has three wires to the same places.
IMHO whole-house is _much_ better than power-strip MOVs because of the reduced impedence to ground -- the rod is near the box. Also, check your ground rod and upgrade clamps -- they often deteriorate (loosen or corrode).
Make sure phone & cable TV entrances are also grounded, preferably to the same stake. If they are on opposite sides of [old] houses, you are going to occasionally fry equipment from nearby lightening strikes due to transient ground potential difference.
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The $40-$60 ones are pants. Go with the Square D Surgebreaker Plus. About $300.
Gas discharge protected MOVs and silicon avalanche diodes. Robust against even a sustained high voltage. All-mode protection etc.
Protects phone and incoming coax too.
Then on top of that add some local surge protectors in your house. I happen to like the Tripp-Lite ones. This will protect you if say a fridge or AC goes bonkers.
When you get your surgebreaker make sure you have a good ground too. If you have an electrician install i
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Not too worried about local power strip devices -- the AC certainly is on separate circuits, and the fridge is most likely to be. If they generate any surges (unlikely), they have to feed it to the panel where the whole-house MOVs will ground it out.
England and germany (Score:2)
We have a uk house earthed with a modernish electrical trip box of ten year - anything internal like a light-bulb going can trip the local circuit and not the house. The item is not up to date with modern building rules and regs,
Poe devices (ethernet over electrical wiring) are ok with this
UK electrics items are also fused, although having lived in Germany i have bought a large flat fuse when the power died,
The underground power mains from the power supplier most summers terminates though old age and the th
Real lightning protection (Score:2)
You can buy good lightning protection devices from Square D or Siemens. Here's a background paper from Siemens. [siemens.com] and a product guide from Square D. [squared.com]. These go between the meter and the circuit breaker box. They're hulking big metal boxes with big inductors inside and a huge ground wire. You can get various peak current ratings, up to 480,000 amps. That's more power than lightning bolts have.
Similar protection devices are available for phone lines. [sandman.com] These attach where the phone line enters the building an
A good solution : Total Protection Solutions (Score:2)
http://www.tpscanada.ca/ [tpscanada.ca]
You have to remember that the more MOVs you have, the better chance you have to absorb a lightning strike.
did you try google? (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=whole+house+surge+protector&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=2095718605650227831&sa=X&ei=_syqT7vTOKm62wWN7eymAg&ved=0CPcBEPMCMAE [google.com]
That is one of the best made. If you want to waste more money, look at the snake oil sold by http://www.richardgrayspowercompany.com/ [richardgra...ompany.com]
Nothing is better than the above Leviton unit for surge protection.
Don't forget about the trees... (Score:2)
I live on the US Gulf Coast and I get more than my fair share of lightning strikes. Because of the long power feed line coming to my house, the power company installed an "enhanced" ground system and whole house surge suppressor. While I haven't had a lightening strike take out all my electrical appliances, I still have the occasional small electronics die during an electrical storm. My cable modem, television, and anything connected to coaxial cable have been struck by lightning so don't forget to purchase
Most surges induced (Score:2)
Most of the surge damage I have seen in the last several years is on things like phone lines and Ethernet. Long wires act like antennas and get high voltages induced onto them. Ethernet is especially sensitive. Surge protectors should located as close as possible to equipment being protected for maximum protection. Over the last several years I have lost more Ethernet ports on switches and equipment than anything else. Good Ethernet surge protectors at http://www.magicsurge.com/ [magicsurge.com]
Power Company (Score:2)
For example, my power company is Gulf Power: http://www.gulfpower.com/premiumsurge/home.asp [gulfpower.com]
Talk to your electrician (Score:2)
There are normal, fuse-like surge protectors you can just install in the breaker-board. If you are paranoid, you can use MOX and plasma devices at once. I do not know what standards are in use at your side, but here are a few links for 235V devoices used in Europe (sorry, text is German):
https://www.distrelec.ch/ [distrelec.ch]überspannungsableiter-typ-1-dreiphasig-für-tnc-systeme/dehn/dv-m-tnc-255
https://www.distrelec.ch/ [distrelec.ch]überspannungsableiter-typ-2/dehn/dreiphasig-für-tt-und-tn-systeme
https://www.dist [distrelec.ch]
Check out mikeholt.com (Score:3)
http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarchive/LSP-HTML/HTML/TVSS-Protection-Questions-and-Answers~20040708.php [mikeholt.com]
Those guys know their electricals.
Damage from a close lightning strike will probably not be mitigated by whole house surge suppressors. But I would still install one. The important point to look for is UL 1449-listed devices. Then at specific locations, install a good surge suppressor. Kinda like computer defense-in-depth. Something from ZeroSurge will help if your home is old and doesn't have ground; otherwise, a normal MOV surge suppressor requires good ground. This would be equipment ground and is not the same as your grounding rods/water pipe ground. The latter are really for lightning strikes. ZeroSurge doesn't use MOVs and don't rely on equipment ground. You may also want to consider getting a line conditioner but I haven't done any research on their viability.
I'm looking at the Leviton 51120. Depending if your house is single or three phase, you'll need to get the right model for the type of service you're receiving. The Leviton is nice because it comes with its own J-box for extra protection. Eaton (Cutler-Hammer) has one but it's normally attached on the bottom of the buss bars while a lot of other companies recommend their TVSSes be installed on a breaker that is the closest to the service conductors. I prefer the standalone devices like the Leviton because they could be installed on any panel instead of a specific brand. The Leviton can also pigtail into an existing breaker. If you have Eaton/Square D QO breakers, you could attach up to 2 hots per breaker.
If you do decide to get one installed, make sure you or the electrician make the conductors as short as possible and don't create too sharp a turn in them.
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The keyword you used is overload. Breakers prevent against high LOAD. A surge is not load, it is a momentary, sometimes only milliseconds, spike in line voltage that cruises right on through a circuit breaker like it's not even there.
Re:Already there (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing current and voltage. Fuses and breakers are over-current devices, Transient Surge Suppressors are over-voltage devices. A high voltage at low amps can destroy all the electronics in the house without tripping a breaker or burning a fuse. The only thing that over-current devices protect against are short circuits in devices or in wiring, or excessive load that might overheat wiring.
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Re:Already there (Score:5, Funny)
Not true, just like AIDS and other STDs, there most certainly is a perfect protection available....its just that most people don't like sitting in the dark with all of their electronics unplugged, especially if they aren't getting laid either.
Of course, in either case, this solution is not considered fun.
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often even come with offers of an 'insurance policy/guarantee' built in for the value of your home electronics if they do get fried
Those are carefully written to be absolutely unclaimable. You'd have better luck just using the best buy replacement program (sarc tag)
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I wouldn't say unclaimable, but definitely stacked in their favor. Their usual verbiage says that their (usually $25-30k) guarantee kicks in after any other insurance such as home-owners have paid out. (and that kicks in after their deductible) So in reality, very few of those claims are actually useful. If you have say a $150 deductible with $10k limit on your home-owners for that sort of thing, you'd have to blow out more than $10,150 of your home's hardware to scratch their coverage.
But it's nice if y
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The standard /. car analogy is 50K people die in car accidents annually, its illegal to drive without seatbelts, therefore seatbelts are a waste of money.
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A LED drawing 1-2W would blind you.
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That's fine and all, but those are LED LASERS, not LED lights, the post he was referring to was talking about an LED light. LED lights are up to 23 watts being the same as an incandescent being 100 watts (REF: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/05/07/193200/philips-releases-100w-equivalent-led-bulb-runs-on-just-23-watts?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed [slashdot.org] )
LED lasers like all lasers at a much lower power rate are hazardous due to the radiation aspect of it (Light Amplification from Simulated Emissi
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Ferroresonant transformers are a good solution for voltage regulation (where the incoming line voltage varies outside the acceptable range), but they can produce unacceptable waveform distortion (and excessive losses) when underloaded. They work best with relatively constant loads, which a whole-house residential application IS NOT.
I knew Marketing folks were bad, but... (Score:2)
And let me fuck your wife and any daugheters. And your grandmother. I kindda like your aunt too.
That's how all of IT marketing works, after all
Hmm...learn something new every day.
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Or just get some shipped over from UK. All surge protection devices (strips, pass-through sockets, etc.) are rated at least 250VAC / 13A with response times for some in the nanoseconds. You'll need plug adapters by the crate though...
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Your reply suggests that the only thing preventing him knowing how to perfectly secure his electrical possessions is that he can't spell "surge", or doesn't know of this google thing.
Buzz off. Anyone can google for a product. The question wasn't "are there surge protectors designed to protect a home", but "what are my options? what works well? can I trust a single d
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Have they finally demoted the USA out of the first world? About damn time...
Signed,
A Disgruntled Florida Resident.
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Just keep in mind that you still need to protect phone/cable lines as well, but i think it's a good idea, if your utility offers it.
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I have a whole home surge protector. Fits above the mains panel.
30 minute installation by an electrician and works nicely.
http://www.purgethesurge.ca/docs/SPD4home.pdf [purgethesurge.ca]
has two nice lights to show its functioning normally and works great.
All you know is that it passes your mains voltage and lights up your little blinkies. You need to conjure the ghost of Nicoli Tesla and create a giant electromagnetic storm over your house and see if your system survives that.
Only then can you be sure.