Talking to a master electrician made me rethink whole home surge protection

I was chatting with an old timer at the supply house yesterday who told me he's replaced 12 refrigerators this year from one house with no whole house surge. He said a $200 protector could have saved them $4,000 in appliances. Has anyone else started recommending these on every panel upgrade?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.wyatt26d ago

Man that is exactly what I've been seeing! I had a customer last year who lost their brand new washer and dryer, plus their TV, because they didn't have any surge protection. Whole house unit would have been like $150 installed and saved them nearly $3,000. Now I include a quote for one in every panel swap I do.

diana2025d ago

You know, there's another angle to this that nobody's talking about. Those whole house surge protectors work great for big spikes coming in from the power lines, but they don't do a thing for surges that happen inside your own home. I had a friend whose teenager plugged in a cheap space heater in the bedroom and it caused a power glitch that fried the control board on their new refrigerator in the kitchen. A point-of-use surge strip on the fridge would have saved them $400. So really, the best protection is having both a whole house unit and individual strips on your expensive electronics and appliances.

alexc9312d ago

Yeah but I'm not totally sold on that @diana20. A quality whole house unit catches most of the damaging spikes before they even reach your panel, and the odds of a space heater killing a fridge two rooms away seem pretty low. I'd rather spend money on the main panel protection and use basic strips for the rest.