Surge Protection
Much more than the plug-in unit under your desk!
by David Irwin on February 26th
When someone mentions surge protector, do you think of the little multi-plug unit under your desk? Most people believe that’s all there is. Did you know that is level 3 protection and the LAST line of defense? Are you protecting all your data paths? Surges can occur on phone and cable lines as well. No level 3 surge protector will protect against lightning! Do you have lightning arrestors installed? What about your appliances? Your air conditioner, washer, dryer, refrigerator, etc., are all susceptible to surges. If lightning strikes, are you prepared to replace all your appliances? Alright, I see where you’re going with that one. Pay the insurance deductible and get all new appliances. But how much will your insurance pay for your old appliances? You will need to pay the difference for the upgrades. What about the disposal of your old appliances? The appliance store may take care of that for you… for a price. See how this is beginning to add up? Even with insurance, it will likely cost thousands of dollars. Are you prepared for that? I’m not!
Think of quality surge protectors as insurance. You hope you’ll never need them, but if/when you do, you’ll be glad you have them! Notice I said “quality” surge protectors. Most cheap protectors employ a single MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) across the hot and neutral lines. As voltage increases, the resistance of the MOV decreases, shunting the excess voltage to ground. How fast can the MOV react? What is the let-through voltage? There are cheap MOV’s, and larger, more expensive, ones that provide better protection. Another problem with cheap MOV’s is heat. As they begin to shunt voltage to ground, they heat up. If the surge voltage is high enough or lasts long enough, the MOV will heat to the point of catching on fire. If your surge protector has a plastic case, the flame will burn through the plastic.
I recommend the Tripp-Lite Isobar series surge protectors. Tripp-Lite has a heavy metal case. If you were to open the case and compare the components with other surge protectors, you would see the MOV’s are much larger, and heavier duty than other manufacturers use. They also include 3 MOV’s to protect Hot to Neutral, Neutral to ground, and Hot to Ground. In addition, they have circuitry to eliminate EMI/RFI interference. They also provide a lifetime warranty. Should the unit ever fail, for any reason, even a lightning strike, they will replace it. The design of the units allows them to react in nanoseconds. There are differences in the various models to be aware of though. Some will completely disconnect on failure to protect your equipment. Others will allow voltage to flow after the circuits failed for applications like appliances. APC is another company that makes a quality product, but they also make some very inexpensive models. You get what you pay for. Remember, these are the last line of defense, and should not be your only protection. I’m discussing them first because they’re inexpensive and easy to install.
Level 2 protection is a whole house surge protector. These install in your breaker box. While they’re not difficult to install, they are in a high voltage location. If you’re not comfortable working inside the breaker box, you should hire a licensed contractor or electrician to install the protector. Whole house protectors can be purchased at your local hardware store for $100 - $250. These may also help to prevent the surge protector under your desk from failing, in addition to protecting equipment not connected to another surge protector.
Level 1 protection is installed at the meter. These do require professional installation, and in some cases, a permit from the electric company is required. However, I do not feel this is an investment everyone should have. In most cases, the electric company has already covered this to protect their own equipment.
Don’t forget to protect the line in from your Internet provider. The cable company will tell you their line is grounded and no further protection is necessary. I’m here to tell you that is NOT sufficient! We have several customers that will be happy to tell you the horror stories of lightning striking near the cable, and taking out everything connected to cable. That does not mean just the modem. If you have a router wired to the modem, and your computer wired to the router, you’re going to have some new door stops. You will want to replace the cable company’s ground block with one that includes a gas discharge lightning arrestor. This is an example from Amazon:
Think of quality surge protectors as insurance. You hope you’ll never need them, but if/when you do, you’ll be glad you have them! Notice I said “quality” surge protectors. Most cheap protectors employ a single MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) across the hot and neutral lines. As voltage increases, the resistance of the MOV decreases, shunting the excess voltage to ground. How fast can the MOV react? What is the let-through voltage? There are cheap MOV’s, and larger, more expensive, ones that provide better protection. Another problem with cheap MOV’s is heat. As they begin to shunt voltage to ground, they heat up. If the surge voltage is high enough or lasts long enough, the MOV will heat to the point of catching on fire. If your surge protector has a plastic case, the flame will burn through the plastic.
I recommend the Tripp-Lite Isobar series surge protectors. Tripp-Lite has a heavy metal case. If you were to open the case and compare the components with other surge protectors, you would see the MOV’s are much larger, and heavier duty than other manufacturers use. They also include 3 MOV’s to protect Hot to Neutral, Neutral to ground, and Hot to Ground. In addition, they have circuitry to eliminate EMI/RFI interference. They also provide a lifetime warranty. Should the unit ever fail, for any reason, even a lightning strike, they will replace it. The design of the units allows them to react in nanoseconds. There are differences in the various models to be aware of though. Some will completely disconnect on failure to protect your equipment. Others will allow voltage to flow after the circuits failed for applications like appliances. APC is another company that makes a quality product, but they also make some very inexpensive models. You get what you pay for. Remember, these are the last line of defense, and should not be your only protection. I’m discussing them first because they’re inexpensive and easy to install.
Level 2 protection is a whole house surge protector. These install in your breaker box. While they’re not difficult to install, they are in a high voltage location. If you’re not comfortable working inside the breaker box, you should hire a licensed contractor or electrician to install the protector. Whole house protectors can be purchased at your local hardware store for $100 - $250. These may also help to prevent the surge protector under your desk from failing, in addition to protecting equipment not connected to another surge protector.
Level 1 protection is installed at the meter. These do require professional installation, and in some cases, a permit from the electric company is required. However, I do not feel this is an investment everyone should have. In most cases, the electric company has already covered this to protect their own equipment.
Don’t forget to protect the line in from your Internet provider. The cable company will tell you their line is grounded and no further protection is necessary. I’m here to tell you that is NOT sufficient! We have several customers that will be happy to tell you the horror stories of lightning striking near the cable, and taking out everything connected to cable. That does not mean just the modem. If you have a router wired to the modem, and your computer wired to the router, you’re going to have some new door stops. You will want to replace the cable company’s ground block with one that includes a gas discharge lightning arrestor. This is an example from Amazon:
These work like spark plugs. They install at the cable box on the side of your house where the line from the cable company connects to the splitter for your house wiring. They must be connected to the ground wire in that box. Should lightning strike the cable, the gas inside the tube provides an easy spark gap to ground. Irwin Electronics can install these for you if you prefer. You may want to consider adding one of these to your satellite line as well if you have DirecTV or Dish. Although this particular model is only rated to 1.5 GHz, I can say it works fine with DirecTV. These are very inexpensive but do require some skill to install. We also recommend a surge protector with coax protection for your modem, satellite receiver, or anything else connected to a cable jack in your home.
If you have DSL service, the phone box on the side of your house has surge protection built in. This would be your level 1 and 2 protection. You will want to use a surge protector with Telephone/Ethernet protection inside your home.
Yes, these are redundant. If you’re dealing with something like lightning, you want to provide as many paths to ground as possible. Even with multiple paths, lightning is extremely powerful. It may very easily overload your protection and still take out your equipment. Nothing can guarantee complete protection against lightning. By using multiple layers of protection we hope to shunt off enough that anything remaining reaching your equipment would be harmless.
As always, if you have further questions, or need assistance, we are only a phone call away at 480-382-4761.
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