If you’re looking to protect your home as well as your electrical system, appliances and electronics, a whole-home surge protector is the best option. Power surges can do severe damage almost instantly and potentially destroy many things in your home or even cause your house to catch fire.
That’s especially the case if your house gets hit by lightning or experiences a surge caused by something like a downed power line. In this case, the only way to potentially prevent major damage is if you have a whole-home surge protector. Here, we’ll explain all you need to know about power surges and how a whole-home surge protector can keep your house safe.
Understanding Internal and External Power Surges
The first thing to understand when it comes to surge protection is that there is a difference between internal and external power surges. An internal surge is when the power in one of your home’s electrical circuits spikes due to an issue like a short circuit or damaged wire or appliance. An external surge is when the power in the electrical grid serving a home spikes, resulting in a massive surge of electricity flowing into the house and throughout its entire electrical system.
External surges caused by an issue such as a lighting strike or a blown transformer typically cause a much bigger spike. However, internal surges can also be fairly powerful and do quite a bit of damage to your home’s wiring and anything you have plugged in. Nonetheless, internal power surges are usually confined to a single circuit and only last for a very brief time before the circuit breaker trips. This stops power from continuing to flow to that circuit. In case of an external surge, the spike can damage your entire electrical system and the majority of your electrical fixtures, appliances and whatever else is currently plugged in.
Why Surge Protector Strips Aren’t Always Sufficient
It’s always a good idea to plug sensitive and/or expensive electronics like TVs, stereo systems and computers into a surge protector strip. If an internal power surge ever occurs, the strip should almost instantly block the power from flowing out of its outlets. This is so that nothing you have plugged into the strip gets damaged. Many people also believe that a surge protector strip will help protect against damage from lightning strikes and other external power surges, but this is mostly a myth.
A surge strip may still work in case of a minor external surge, but it can only handle so many joules of power before it fails. This allows the electricity to continue flowing. The very best strips can typically handle up to 1,000-2,000 joules whereas an external surge can often produce tens of thousands of joules. That means an external surge will typically just fry the surge strip and prevent it from diverting the current from the hot wire into the ground wire.
The other issue if your house is hit by an external power surge is that your electrical wiring, outlets, light fixtures and switches and every hard-wired appliance could still suffer major damage. That means you could still end up facing a major repair bill even if your surge protector strips managed to deflect the power away from everything you had plugged into them.
An Overview of How Whole-Home Surge Protection Works
The purpose of a whole-home surge protector is to stop power from continuing to flow into a house should an external power surge ever occur. The way it works is that the surge protector is in between the house’s main electrical panel and the wire from the grid that feeds the house. If it detects that the voltage of the electrical current flowing to the house increases above a certain level, it activates within a split second.
It then redirects the current away from the house through the copper grounding wire in the electrical panel. The current then flows through this wire into the grounding rod outside the house. This rod is driven several feet deep into the ground, which allows the current to be safely released to where it disperses into the soil.
Every type of surge protector, including surge strips, has what’s known as a clamping voltage, which is how many volts it takes to activate the device. The best surge protector strips have a clamping voltage of 330V, but some poor-quality models won’t clamp until the current spikes above 600V.
Ideally, you want the clamping voltage to be as low as possible so that the protector will activate with even a fairly minor surge. If you had a strip with a clamping voltage of 600V, there’s still a high chance your devices would get damaged as a result of anything other than a major surge. A high-quality whole-home surge protector should also have a clamping voltage no higher than 400V. That way it will offer protection against minor surges as well as larger electrical spikes.
Can a Whole-Home Surge Protector Protect Against Lightning Strikes?
A good whole-home surge protector should be able to handle over 40,000 amps of electricity without failing. The average lightning bolt is around 30,000 amps. That means a good surge protector should be able to handle a lightning strike or other major surge with no issues and will prevent the surge from coursing through your electrical system.
Some lightning bolts are obviously more powerful, and no whole-home surge protector will ever prevent damage should an extremely powerful bolt of lightning directly strike your house. Luckily, the chances of that ever happening are extremely slim. There is also a chance that a lightning bolt hitting a nearby power pole, transformer or a neighbor’s house could potentially overwhelm a whole-home surge protector. Nonetheless, it will still offer protection against the vast majority of external power surges.
The only thing to note is that a powerful external power surge will likely end up frying even the best whole-home surge protector. The good news is that power surges generally only last for an extremely short time, which means the surge protector would still successfully do its job and redirect the surge away from your house before it fails.
You’ll obviously need to pay for an electrician to replace your surge protector should it get damaged or destroyed. Nonetheless, installing a new device will typically only cost you a few hundred dollars. That is nothing compared to the thousands or tens of thousands you would typically have to pay if your house got hit by a major surge and you didn’t have whole-home surge protection.
Contact Us Today
Since 1982, Anderson Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric has been offering top-notch home services in Mentor, Lake County and most of the Greater Cleveland area. We specialize in all types of residential electrical services. You can count on our team if you’re looking to install a whole-home surge protector, a whole-home generator, an EV charging station, new lighting or anything else.
We also offer expert electrical repairs and can make sure all parts of your home’s electrical system are safe and work properly. If you need any heating, air conditioning or plumbing service, you can count on us for that as well. If you’re considering whole-home surge protection, contact us and we’ll ensure you get the best option for your home.
