Whole-Home Surge Protection
Sudden power surges can damage your electronics and appliances. They can also wear out your home’s electrical wiring. Damaged wiring is a serious problem that requires extensive, costly rewiring. A whole-house surge protector can prevent the loss of expensive electronics and provide ongoing protection of your wiring.
What Causes Power Surges?
Many things can cause power surges, including overloaded circuits, power company outages, damaged wiring, lightning, and tripped circuit breakers.
All surges aren’t large spikes in power. Surges can occur as small, recurring jumps. In fact, those miniature spikes cause most of the damage to your sensitive electronics.
The best defense against power surges is a whole house surge protector.
What Is a Whole House Power Surge Protector?
Single-strip surge protectors are great for individual electronics and other sensitive equipment. These single strips do a good job of protecting those items, but they can’t protect your house or wiring if a serious surge happens.
A whole-house surge protector, sometimes known as a whole house surge arrestor, is a voltage breaker. In simple terms, it keeps excess power from entering your home’s wiring. It monitors the voltage levels and regulates them to keep them from getting too high for your home’s capacity. The result is an even flow of power with no surprising spikes and fewer outages.
How Does a Whole Home Surge Protector Work?
Most single-strip protectors absorb the excess voltage so it doesn’t reach the device or appliance it’s protecting. A whole-house protector, on the other hand, redirects the power rather than absorbing it.
The protector is hard-wired directly to your main electrical panel. It contains a built-in monitor that continuously checks the power levels entering your home. When the power in one line gets too high, it redirects that power to the ground wire. This means the extra power is grounded, and only a safe amount will enter your home’s wiring.
Do You Have To Reset a Whole Home Surge Protector?
One benefit of a whole-home surge protector is that it doesn’t need to be reset after every power surge.
Occasionally, you may have to reset it after a, particularly large surge. Most protectors have built-in alerts that let you know the panel needs to be reset.
How Much Protection Do You Get?
Whole house protectors or arrestors can handle extremely high loads, including those caused by lightning and downed electrical wires. There are very few surges that will cause a whole house protector to fail.
The protector will keep excess voltage out of all your major appliances, including ovens, washers, dryers, and refrigerators. Electronics, computers, and smart TVs are all highly sensitive to even minor power surges, and a whole house protector will keep them safe.
What Is Involved in Installing Whole House Surge Protection?
Professional installation of a whole-home surge protector takes about two hours. This is not a job you want to attempt on your own. It involves opening your electrical box and working directly with power feeds and circuitry. Always call an electrician to perform this type of work.
What Are the Best Brands of Whole House Protectors?
At SESCOS, we recommended and install two levels of surge protection.
Surge Protector: Whole house surge protection with supplemental manufacturer-provided coverage of up to $25,000.
ULTRA Surge Protector: Whole house surge protection with supplemental manufacturer-provided coverage of up to $75,000.
Prices include safe, expert installation.
If you’re not sure which one is best for you, talk to us. We’ll help you choose the protection level that’s right for you. Talk to SESCOS today about protecting your expensive electronics and your home’s wiring.