These days, our homes have more electronic devices and more appliances connected to our power supply than ever. More smart devices and technology is being integrated throughout homes with each coming day. This paradigm shift puts an increased strain on your home’s power circuit, making the event of a power surge ever more likely. The benefits of whole-home surge protection include protecting your home, family, and assets from dangerous and costly power surges.
Power surges don’t simply cut out your lights and wi-fi, they also produce stress on your home’s electrical wiring. Over time, this stress wears out the wiring to the point where it becomes unreliable or useless and needs to be replaced. Protecting the home’s circuit with whole-home surge protection can add many more years of life to the wires within your walls.
While dedicated surge protectors can secure individual outlets and the devices connected, using them everywhere in the home isn’t practical or advisable. For those appliances that are hardwired into your home’s system, such as HVAC, it is best to get whole-home surge protection. Having to replace air conditioning units due to a power surge is incredibly costly.
Two Types of Power Surge
External Power Surges
External power surges come from sources outside the home, such as lightning directly striking the home or swells in the power grid due to malfunctions brought on by the power company. When an event like this occurs, the power coming in floods over the circuit throughout the home. This can overload sensitive appliances and devices that are connected to your circuit without the proper surge protection.
Internal Power Surges
Most people are surprised to learn that 60-80% of home power surges are caused internally. The fluctuations in running cycles of large appliances and connected devices cause the circuit to overload. While surge protectors can be used for protecting some individual devices at certain spots in the home, like a TV, for example, most large appliances are not protected. This internal power surge can do major damage to the appliances we rely on for daily household routines, and basic homeowner’s insurance packages do not cover these losses.
What is Whole-Home Surge Protection
Whole-home surge protection does exactly what it sounds like; it protects your whole home from a power surge. Whenever a transient surge of power comes from a device or outlet in your home to the control panel, the whole-home surge protector then diverts the excess power away from shared circuits and grounds it, effectively nullifying the potentially harmful effects.
Whole-home surge protection guards against harmful effects from the following types of events:
- Fried circuit boards on sensitive electronic devices. New electronic devices often use highly sophisticated circuit boards that are very sensitive to the voltage applied through their circuit.
- Internal power surges caused by the running cycles of large household appliances. Even small surges have lasting effects on the wiring in your home.
- External power surges from downed transformers or voltage discrepancies elsewhere in the power lines.
- Lightning strikes. If you live in an area prone to electrical storms, lightning directly hitting your home can do massive damage to your connected devices and appliances.
The whole-home surge protector is a small box installed at the electrical box of your home. It serves as an intermediary for power going through the panel, whether from the external power grid or shared circuits throughout the home.
We highly recommend hiring a professional electrician to install a whole-home surge protector. Attempting to install it yourself can lead to a dangerous situation and incorrect installation can result in the ineffectiveness of the device. Unless you are highly skilled in servicing electrical systems, for the safety of your home and family, hire a professional to install it correctly.
Benefits of Whole-Home Surge Protection
Whole-home surge protection offers safety for your family, home, and assets within your home. With a one-time investment, you can safeguard your home for many years.
Gain peace of mind that your home is protected against potentially harmful electrical events by getting the professionals at Colvin Electric to install whole-home surge protection in your home.