I don't know about those, but I do know they make surge suppressed outlets. If the first outlet in a string is so protected, so is everything downstream. When I remodeled my game room, my electrician used a few of these outlets to protect the whole room.

I would say its a must.

I'd be interested in finding out out about this as well.

I've been told that every house is supposed to be "grounded" somewhere exterior to foundation or buried within the foundation. I've bought surge protectors for about some of my major mechanicals including where my pins have been set up. It's just typical like what you guys probably have, a 6 outlet surge protector that plugs into the wall. I have one for my main tv in the house and computer, pins...and...i guess that's it.

I do NOT have surge protectors for any appliances in my kitchen, HVAC etc and they are newer and have chips in them as well. Thunderstorms are around the corner. Do i need to be doing something different?

I have a whole-house one. When I had my generator installed I had the electrician install it. From what I understand it's good (relatively) cheap protection on voltage coming in from utility but it will NOT protect voltage spikes that originate inside the house.

one word answer: yes...

I use the square d sdsa1175 and install it in the meter can it is ahead of the circuit panel and use the additional point of use surge protectors for the outlets for better proctection

20% of surges happen outside the house, and 80% happen inside. A whole house one is nice, but don't be spooked into thinking you "must" have one, that's a myth. Protection of sensitive microprocessor based equipment like your computers, televisions and pins with quality indoor surge protectors is wise...I have those all over my house.

I have a customer that has one of these installed and his pinball machine still managed to get the varistor blown up on two different occasions somehow. I don't think these will help for surges internal to the house or a direct lightning hit.

the only protection from a direct lightning hit is to unplug...

personally, when it comes to lightning, i choose to live dangerously (as well as ensure my homeowners insurance is up to date)...

Yeah that's what I figured....and it's unlikely I'm going to be home at the right time or awake to engage in unplugging when we got a lot of t-storms around here. Better check my homeowners insurance too.

The odds of a nearby lightning strike are much greater than a direct hit, so a whole-house surge suppressor is a wise investment. The closer the unit is located to the meter box or main panel the better - and it will do a better job than point-of-use units alone.

Inside surges are much more common than any lightning strike, near or direct.

20% of surges happen outside the house, and 80% happen inside

A classic example is a coffee pot located far from the service entrance. Every time the heater kicks on and off to maintain the coffee temperature, significant surges are generated.

It should be obvious that a coffee pot cycling on and off several times an hour is a much more frequent event than a tree falling on the power wires, or a lightning storm.

http://www.cepro.com/article/the_myth_of_whole_house_surge_protection/

Put anything you value under a high quality Uninterruptible Power Supply. Even if you don't care if it loses power in an outage, those are the best surge protectors you can get. The little plug in strips don't do anything.

You don't think there's any possibility that this article you're quoting - written by a guy who works for a company that sells (only) point-of-use surge suppression equipment targeted toward the A/V marketplace - is primarily intended to sell his product, do you? The line about how "impractical" it is to have service entrance equipment installed rings a little false - hey, don't worry about having to get a licensed electrician, just buy our stuff.

And consider this: unless your equipment is plugged into THE SAME CIRCUIT where the coffee maker is located that surge has to travel back through the service panel to any other branch circuits - and guess where the whole-house surge suppressor is connected?

Don't get me wrong, I have a whole-house unit, a series-mode Furman unit for my A/V gear, and point-of-use gear at each installation of sensitive equipment - but I'd argue the article you quote is not entirely free of bias.

That's what I was thinking too - ever since I got my first UPS I can't go back!

Point taken. Overkill for the average joe IMO, if you have the means, by all means go for it.

It really depends on your situation. Age of wiring in your neighborhood, above ground, below ground and weather. As for my situation I live in North Texas. In a remodeled older house in a above ground wired neighborhood. Here it works like a champ. Without it I can actually here when my box shorts and it explodes inside the box because of ice shorting a transformer. I put one in a few years back and it trips about every ice storm which is good. So it really depends on the situation your house is sitting in.

Below ground wiring...I probably would not. Above ground. Lots of ice. yes.

Short answer. No

Hole house surge protector won't stop it from getting into Ethernet cables, cable tv wires etc. That will still blow shit up. First hand experience of CAT5 network cable picking up a lightning strike and blowing up routers and devices attached to it.

If you purchase a quality surge protector, it will also have your data lines(cable/phone) from outside going through it.
Fios has one built into their units already. Making sure that your house is properly GROUNDED would eliminate most spikes and surges that may come from an unbalanced load (coffee pot). Most homes grounding rods are only good for 7-10 years. You should have them replaced if its been that long. This would also eliminate any dimming that you may be experiencing.

I'm not understanding how a coffee pot, a pure resistive load, can cause a SURGE. A dip in voltage, sure but a surge? It just doesn't make electrical sense to me.

Now, inductive loads can certainly cause surges. The coils in a motor or ballast act just like the coils in our flippers. When they power down, the breakdown of the magnetic flux in the coil causes a spike in electrical energy. In appliances, this is typically blocked from going back down the line because the switch that turned it off breaks the path (in pinball, the diode shorts out the surge). However, the chances of these surges causing damage to electrical equipment plugged in elsewhere in the home is small, especially considering these devices have to be designed to be tolerant of them else they would break down constantly.

The bigger risk to equipment damage is lightning striking power lines, the home next door or the ground near power lines, and storms where portions of the grid go off-line and come back on-line (due to downed power lines, etc). In these cases the surge will come down the main power feed into your home. In these cases, a whole house surge protector installed near your main breaker panel will help.

In the rare situations of a direct lightning strike to your house, a whole house protector will only partially help. It can help the devices that are "on the other side" of your main panel (and where the whole house surge protector is installed) from where the lighting strikes. It cannot help the devices that are near where the lighting entered the home.

This being said, I'm not sure paying someone several hundred to install one is a good value. You need to weigh out the cost of several plug in type units that will do as good a job vs the whole house unit (assuming you buy a plug in one for every valuable piece of equipment in your home). The biggest benefit of the whole house unit is it offers SOME protection to everything in your home, even your coffee pot.

If you can install one yourself (they are ~$65 at Home Depot, etc), they can't hurt. Installation is not trivial as it involves wiring inside your main breaker panel which does require someone that knows what they are doing.

You are looking at what happens when devices power down, and you are looking at voltage - when you really need to look at inrush current. When they power up, they have inrush current. Your home lighting is also a resistive load that causes surges.

"Inrush current is also sometimes known as surge current, and as noted above is always higher than the normal operating current of the equipment. The ratio of inrush current to normal full-load current can range from 5 to 100 times greater. A piece of equipment that draws 1A at normal full load may briefly draw between 5 and 100A when power is first applied.

This current surge can cause component damage and/or failure within the equipment itself, blown fuses, tripped circuit breakers, and may severely limit the number of devices connected to a common power source. The following loads will all have a significant inrush current, albeit for very different reasons ...

Incandescent lamps using a tungsten filament (AC or DC powered, any voltage)
Fluorescent and other gas discharge lamps (including compact fluorescent types)
Power transformers, especially toroidal types of 500VA or more
Power supplies that obtain a low voltage AC from a transformer
Electronic power supplies, as commonly used for personal computers, wall supplies, etc.
Electronic power supplies with active power factor correction (PFC)
Electric motors of all types, with the greatest problems caused when starting under load from rest
CRT computer monitors and TV receivers. Inrush is deliberately created to operate the degaussing coil(s)

The list above covers a great many products, and with modern electronics infiltrating almost every household and industrial item used it actually covers just about every product available. Few modern products are exempt from inrush current - at least to a degree."

http://sound.westhost.com/articles/inrush.htm

A surge suppressor doesn't care about inrush current. A surge suppressor is only concerned with voltages, thus the name: transient voltage surge suppressor. While I agree that everything on that list, with the possible exception of incandescent lamps, creates a surge of CURRENT when they are energized, the only effect that would have on VOLTAGE would be a sag. Sags shouldn't be a great concern for pinball machines. Hell, my 6hp heat pump draws 80A at start-up while only running at 23A, it causes a VOLTAGE sag of 40V, dimming the lights substantially and causing major embarassment for an electrician. However, this has never affected any of my pinball machines, TVs, stereos, computers or any other electronic item. Also remember, TVSSs have a limited lifespan determined by how many voltage surges they see. Some of the industrial ones have LEDs that indicate the condition the suppressor is in. I have seen several that exploded violently when they were done. Good times. And remember, none of the cute little suppressors in power strips will protect you from any sort of lightning event. If you are unsure, unplug.

I've been reading this post and have a few thoughts. I work for an electric utility as a distribution engineer so I've seen more than my fair share of damaged equipment. That being said, here my thoughts:

1. A whole home surge protector is a pretty good investment. It won't prevent damage in every case, but it is pretty cheap insurance and will probably be more than adequate for most homes.

2. The 80/20 split of voltage transients originating in the home/voltage transients from utility could be accurate. However, in most cases, the voltage transients originating from outside the home have a much higher probability of causing damage due to higher voltage transients. Lightning is the most common source of damaging voltage transients. Other sources of voltage transients include utility/transmission line switching, capacitor bank switching, induction on lines from nearby faults, and other utility customers causing transients. In most states, it is the end customer who is responsible for providing protection for their electronics and appliances.

3. There was a question about how a current in-rush can cause a voltage spike. This can occur due to how most residential electrical services are constructed. Utilities use a split winding transformer to provide both 120 Volt service and 240 Volt service.

The winding in the transformer is 240 Volts. The utility will tap a neutral at the mid-point of the 240 volt winding and provide three wires to the customer (2 insulated 120V wires and 1 neutral wire). When taking voltage measurements, the two 120 volt wires are 180 degrees out of phase from each other. Therefore, when you measure with a voltmeter across the two 120 volt wires, you will measure 240 volts and when you measure from each 120 volt wire to the neutral, you will read 120 volts.

Now, when you have a 120 volt load in your house, lets say a coffee maker, you have current flowing from the 120 volt "hot" wire, through the resistor in the coffee maker heater element, and flowing back through the neutral to complete the circuit. We know from Ohm's law, that current flowing through a resistor will cause a voltage drop. Depending on the wire size of the neutral wire, you will have a voltage drop across the neutral wire when the current is flowing. Where this causes a voltage spike is on the other 120 volt circuit. Since the two 120 volt circuits are 180 degrees out of phase, a voltage drop on the neutral for one 120 volt circuit will cause a voltage raise of the same magnitude on the other circuit. If the coffee maker kicking on causes a 10 volt drop (which you may see as your lights flickering), it will cause the other circuit to have a 10 volt rise, up to 130 volts. Small wire or poor neutral connections can make this the voltage rise very significant (I've seen over 180 volts in some cases, although this is rare).

Good luck with your decision.

This is certainly true.

However, significant inrush is often produced after a sag, when power is restored. Our commercial products use PTC thermistors in conjuction with MOVs for inrush and voltage transient protection. You are correct, the "cute" little power strip surge protectors will do nothing in the event of a lightning event. And, probably not even the whole house protector. I've seen significant lightning damage on our products where the lightning destroys ALL of the surge protection components, and beyond into the circuitry. Unplug is the only certain protection from lightning.

I'm just saying you can't really throw a whole house surge protector in and expect that it will protect from the surge events generated in the home, surge protection locally on devices will help to protect from the surge events generated in the home.

The kind of power protection device you choose depends on what kind of power problems you might experience.

If you are just concerned with over-voltage and line noise you might want to purchase a surge suppressor.

If you are concerned with under-voltage, over-voltage, and line noise, you might choose a line conditioner.

If you are concerned with over-voltage, line noise, under-voltage and blackouts, you may want to purchase and uninterruptible power supply (or UPS) unit.

Note> not all UPS units provide suppression and line conditioning capabilities.

Also having a multiple grounding electrode conductor system is essential,dont skimp on rods especially in lightning prone areas.

Eric, thanks for the information. Followup:

So when the large 120v resistive load starts and causes a voltage drop on that phase, the only time it can cause a surge on the other phase is when the load is big enough to drop the voltage on the wiring from the transformer to the home (or inside the panel). The wiring out to the coffee pot has dedicated hot and neutral. There is no shared wiring with the other phase (assuming conventional wiring). The only place there is shared neutral between the phases is between the home and transformer, this is why I believe my statement above is true. (There are special cases where there are shared neutrals between 120V circuits which could result in surges as you describe, but these are rare)

Just because the lights on a circuit dim when the large resistive load on that same circuit turns on, you are not necessarily generating a surge on the other phase. It is most likely just a voltage drop on that branch circuit from typical voltage drop across the wire and connections.

To cause a dangerous voltage drop on a properly working 200AMP main house feed would require a very large load or significant duration, large inrush current, which typical home do not have (I believe).

Additionally, when all the lights in the house dim from a 240V item powering on, there is no surge created in my home since that is across both phases.

So my question is, while I see your theory on how resistive loads can cause voltage surges, in practice in the home, it can't really happen all that often unless there is a wiring fault in the home, correct? If they were common and large enough to cause damage to equipment (again, in a normally operating electrical system), appliances and electronics would be breaking down all the time.

I had a LARGE lightning strike hit along my AC on side of house.

I have a surge protector from my electric company at my meter called a ZAPCAP.

Electric company says I'm insured against lightning strikes for all my equipment.

Found out...BS

They don't cover ground strikes and checked unit and it didn't take a hit.

That strike blew up my cable modem box and anything connected to the internet...as well as my AC motor and a lot of other stuff in house.

Was told ground strikes are very common in Florida.

Now hooked up everything I could wirelessly. Have 10 Sonos connect amps and they are now off a bridge instead of ethernet cable.

Now Unplug pins during summer when big storms coming. But my pins had no damage from ground strike.

Schwaggs, you are correct that in normal operating conditions, the in-rush won't cause major voltage rise on the opposite phase circuit. Where I've seen issues are when the neutral in the panel has connection issues (usually related to mixing copper and aluminum conductors which causes corrosion or high moisture areas causing corrosion), poor load balancing (majority of load on one phase of the 120V service), or issues with the neutral on the utility side.

1,000,000 volts from a lightning strike, turns sand into glass and tends to arc. I would imagine that my 25 dollar surge protector would be of little value if my house was hit directly.

are you worried about lightning? or other stuff?

line feed issues they proub do a decent job-------
lightning, no chance there be balls of plasma toasting anything it gets to- they need to be unpluged..

.

1)surge protector and lightning arrestor are different. 2) Mostly, these are just items for electricians to sell. 3) Surge protector is only as good as the manufacturer brand and warranty. 4) when power goes off and comes back on...it often surges . This is when some damage can occur.. but a lightning hit can go thru about ANYTHING.

5) Are you better having one than not ? yes!... (I have the cutler hammer system in my house)

DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE YOU BUY.