Whole House Surge Protector (1 Viewer)

[Dave Koch]

Hi:

I just read Bryan Acevedo's post about a dedicated 20 amp curcuit for his HT, something I have been considering for a while. In my case, the cheap-o's who built my house did the whole thing with a 125-Amp main box... and wiith the Dryer, the range, the AC, there is no more room!

So I am thinking about a 200 AMP box for the house, and yes, I will DEFINITELY have a REAL electrician put that in... I get sweaty in the palms just thinking about that much juice!

So, if I am gonna do that, shoule I add a whole-house surge protecter at the same time?

Dave

 

[Bill Kane]

Sure, you can check it out. The relevance is controlling spikes (to ground) and protecting other appliances (microwave, washer/dryer etc).

"Whole house" ought not to be considered a total replacement -- if you're really prudent -- to point of use surge protectors for the amps, tv, CD, DVD etc and your computer/modem station.

If I've got this right, whole house is the first line of defense especially in electrical storm/lightning prone areas; neighborhoods with overhead power distribution lines; and power substations situated

 

[Chu Gai]

who will be adding the whole house surge protector, the utility company?

 

[Mike Matheson]

Whole house surge suppression/protection systems are talked about in a couple of threads at AVS that I looked up a while back.
Here's one or two I found again with a quick search:
Thread 1
Thread 2

 

[Brian Treinen]

We recently built an addition to our house, a family room which our HT is in. I had our electrician run 2 20amp duplex outlets dedicated for HT gear. I asked him about surge protection and the concept of going "whole house". He didn't have any input on whether to go MOV based or something like zerosurge/brickwall, however he did say that if I did whole house (which he could add for not much extra $$) if it were him he would (and does) STILL use point of use units for anything he really cares about (i.e. computer, HT gear). Looking at what I have he said skip whole house and go with point of use - which is what I did. The computer isn't an issue for me because it's behind a UPS. My HT is now sitting behind a 20A two-outlet Zerosurge unit with a Tripp-Lite 8 outlet HT unit downstream from that.

 

[Bill Kane]

I like your strategy, brian
That's solid, mainstream surge protection IMO w/o dithering over "balanced power" and "power conditioning". (Many do and will, but to me it gets into tweak/upgraditis areas and is not general but system, climate and power utility/distributiuon dependent.)
bill

 

[Brian Treinen]

Bill,
Thanks! After a couple of months of research (during the construction - or should I say DEstruction) into all the balanced power and other conditioning I asked myself - what am I after? Answer: Lowest cost, effective protection of my system. If there are sonic benefits then great but that's not what I'm after. I figured between the dedicated 20A service and the Zerosurge I had it knocked. $$ out of pocket, $10 each for 2 hospital grade 20A outlets and $180 for the Zerosurge. I considered the two lines "free" since they would have put outlets there anyway.
There is just no way I could justify >$600 for some esoteric power system. Now, if I was at the point where I had invested tens of thousands of dollars on the finest audio equipment and was trying to wring that last bit from my system a PS Audio power director downstream from a balanced power unit would probably be the way to go, but that would set me back almost $3G's