Whole house surge protection
Just tossing this out there. I know we have some resident pro electricians on here, and some smarter than me home owners who'd already have this installed.
About a week ago, we had a serious lightning storm around here. Woke up the next day to find my new Denon amp appears to have blown the HDMI module. Apparently almost every brand AVR sporting HDMI has problems as these are very delicate little princesses. Also may have blown up my PS3, but I really don't care about that right now.
Anyhoo, while I'm trying to get in touch with Denon directly to discuss this I've been considering adding whole house surge protection. My understanding is that surge protectors and bars at the outlet level are pretty much useless without this no matter how much money you spend. I spent close to $100 on mine and it still thinks it's protecting my stuff as it proudly displays it little green light.
Any thoughts/opinions on features, brands, costs (just roughly) to have this installed?
While I love DIY projects, there's no way in hell I'm touching anything in a breaker box except a breaker.
About a week ago, we had a serious lightning storm around here. Woke up the next day to find my new Denon amp appears to have blown the HDMI module. Apparently almost every brand AVR sporting HDMI has problems as these are very delicate little princesses. Also may have blown up my PS3, but I really don't care about that right now.
Anyhoo, while I'm trying to get in touch with Denon directly to discuss this I've been considering adding whole house surge protection. My understanding is that surge protectors and bars at the outlet level are pretty much useless without this no matter how much money you spend. I spent close to $100 on mine and it still thinks it's protecting my stuff as it proudly displays it little green light.
Any thoughts/opinions on features, brands, costs (just roughly) to have this installed?
While I love DIY projects, there's no way in hell I'm touching anything in a breaker box except a breaker.
Comments
I thought you is married
Thank you Sir. I guess it will depend on availability, but I'm willing to travel to pick up whatever materials are required.
Shop super is on holidays, but I can ask a sparky for you. To protect the entire house would be like 5k prob and a nuisance. There is such a device, we are getting close to having to use it with all the circuits we are protecting but haven't gone there yet due to cost/size and I would have to say we are at higher risk, so doubting it would be practical for lightning.
I guess I'm speaking a line conditioner & not just protection too
Protection from direct lightning damage would be very expensive as lightening can jump gaps and is very difficult to stop... Anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something..
Protection from voltage surges is the cheapest and easiest option and is likely what your whole home protection is giving you. This would be short duration spikes or surges on your incoming hydro line likely caused by failure in the regulation circuitry somewhere upstream. This would have many root causes.
Protection from brownouts or power sags (lowering of the incoming voltage) can also be quite expensive from a whole house perspective because it requires either a battery with enough reserve power to power your house or a generator with enough output to power your house. Either is not practical in most instances. Better to just protect sensitive electronics with uninterruptible power supplies individually.. This sort of issue is mostly seen in areas of rapid growth (ie Milton) or areas of heavy industry.
Ok so me being a master electrician accept my word there is a device that is made for your home specifically for lighting strikes/power surges. Pretty sure it's around $ 200. I'll call the wholesaler on Tuesday and let you know.
Where are you?
Yep Ram, from what I've been looking at around the net they seem to range from $30 to around $800, installed as you said at the panel. I just have no idea what's a good product.
I am. That's why I added the part about me talking about conditioning as opposed to surge. I'm assuming this device trips to protect?
Why didn't you quote Comp and shit on him?
Just my .02 but I don't think that's what he meant/was doing Jon. The interweb is way too interpretive and has spawned far too many misunderstandings.
Anyhoo, I can't understand why these things aren't more popular/well known in homes considering that the average home has several thousand dollars worth of electronic gear with wee little microprocessors and boards that are so delicate and subject to damage from minor surges and brown outs. Especially in ON where every August we seem to have these apocalyptic freaking storms.
I'm sure that every reg on this forum has over $1k minimum worth of PC sitting in front of them and I doubt one of us has one of these systems. That's what I don't get. Do they suck and nobody wants them or do they work and nobody knows about them? Or both?
Now if I can just figure out how to change the lightbulb... :fish:
didn't mean to offend...just not sure people know I know what I'm talking about, or know I'm qualified.
Didn't mean to offend?
You won't fit in around here.
I have an APC UPS and it was attached to a desk top for years and had no issues with it. Power would go and the computer would keep on trucking until the battery ran out or I shut it down.
just lost a DVD recorder this way so interested in seeing if this system is enough.
cheers and good luck with your chips and power dips.
Just the bars with the breaker. My understanding is that even though surge suppressors often come with a warranty for damaged equipment that is hooked up to them, it's rarely honoured.
Yep, I've surfed the net quite a bit about this and have found loads of people use UPS with surge suppression on home theater systems. I always thought they were just used on computers.
I haven't had much of a chance to do anything about this other than go through troubleshooting with Denon tech support. Guy had me do everything I've already done, then said it has to go in for service. Boo.